


Something Takes A Part of Me

by GilraenDernhelm



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: All-consuming love, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Doomed Relationship, F/M, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, could have would have should have
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 21:59:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 33
Words: 56,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1758043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GilraenDernhelm/pseuds/GilraenDernhelm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new Arya/Jaime AU in which my two darlings are alone in a boat and feelings happen. Inspired by 'to fight for a cause they've long ago forgotten' by Maple_Fay.<br/>On hiatus, probably for quite a while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [to fight for a cause they've long ago forgotten](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1464028) by [Maple_Fay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maple_Fay/pseuds/Maple_Fay). 



> A note on the AU
> 
> In this AU, Jaime does not flee the capital after attacking Ned, so the whole Riverlands/imprisonment/hand aspect of the story does not happen.
> 
> A note on Arya's age
> 
> Every effort has been made to make Arya's age clear in each segment of this story. Nevertheless, here is a list to clear up any ambiguities for readers sensitive to underage ships.
> 
> Segment 1: 15.
> 
> Segment 2:11 .
> 
> Segments 3 and 4: 12 or 13.
> 
> Segment 5: 15.
> 
> Segment 6: 15.

For King Joffrey's twentieth name day, a hundred knights had competed in a mêlée. It had lasted four days and nights, and had not even produced a winner; a dispute between the supporters of two hedge knights ending in a drunken riot in the tourney grounds and the deaths of fifty gold cloaks in the ending of it.

This year, there was less potential for the slaughter of human beings (if infinitely more for the drowning of them), for Joffrey had decided that the only celebration he could possibly accept was a great banquet and dance on one of the small, rocky islands that dotted Blackwater Bay.

Jaime found the idea preposterous, and said so. Nevertheless, the little shit was determined to have his own way, and Cersei equally determined to let him have it, and by mid-morning of the day in question, Jaime was smirking triumphantly as he silently patrolled the deck of Cersei's pleasure barge; listening to the Lady Sansa squeal and scream about her direwolf brooch that had fallen into the water; listening to Joffrey threaten to have the Lady Sansa gutted if she continued to squeal and scream about her direwolf brooch that had fallen into the water; and listening to Arya volunteer to dive overboard and search for the direwolf brooch that had fallen into the water, if it would only stop her sister from making such a fuss.

The livid look on Arya's face as Cersei refused to allow her to do any such thing was so endearingly hilarious that Jaime had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing. He smiled at the girl as she stomped angrily away, graceful as a bowlegged deer wearing a potato sack, but the fire in her eyes only burned higher at the sight, and she passed him by without a word; leaving him to roll his eyes and attempt to ignore the knot coiling suddenly and unpleasantly in his stomach as her footsteps faded to nothing.

The feast itself was unpleasant, if not uneventful, with Joffrey choosing to spend a good portion of it pointing a crossbow at the Lady Sansa and deliberating loudly as to whether he should send either her, or her corpse, to Ramsay Bolton as a birthday greeting. On the two hundred and fiftieth repetition of this suggestion, Jaime had lost his temper and had threatened to throw the little shit's crossbow into Blackwater Bay; a justified, if unwise threat that provoked a great deal of screaming and death-threats from Joffrey and a stony-faced lecture on the Kingsguard's vows from Cersei. The latter hadn't troubled Jaime much: he would claim an apology later, in the coin of warm skin and kisses. But then the dancing had begun, and Joffrey, under the chivalric guise of asking the resident wallflower to dance, had made Arya suffer through six different sets, half of which she did not know the steps to, and when the younger Stark daughter, in a desperate bid for liberty, had deliberately trodden on the king's toes, Joffrey had dealt her such a powerful blow to the face that she had been knocked unconscious.

The silence could be heard clear across Blackwater Bay as Arya crumpled mutely to the dust. Most of it was the manifestation of a deep but polite disapproval at the king's having struck a lady. A much smaller portion of it was shock at the idea of a sheltered, almost proudly-stupid boy, who had never been to war, being strong enough to knock another person unconscious; even if the person in question was a scrawny little girl with the body of a starved war orphan.

Jaime's own silence was restraint, and resistance of the urge thundering deep within him to stride to her side and help her.

_She wouldn't want it. And under the circumstances, she's probably better off unconscious._

And when the girl had finally come round, and had risen to her feet without so much as a groan passing her lips, and Joffrey had called her his 'queen of dance' and had drunk a toast in her honour, Jaime had not drunk with him; watching, waiting, for her to glance in his direction; to give some indication that she had expected him to help her.

She didn't look at him once.

After enough time had passed for the incident to fall from Joffrey's mind, Arya – mumbling that she felt ill – had asked to be taken back to the city. It had been Cersei's idea of a joke (and a punishment, no doubt, for Jaime's earlier insubordination) to declare that an entire ship could not be dispatched on account of one miniscule girl, and that Jaime should instead take her back in a rowboat. When Jaime had pointed out that two servants could easily be dispatched for the same purpose, Cersei had smiled sweetly at him and accused him of discourteousness to a woman in need. Jaime had mutinously removed his armour, dumped it at Cersei's feet, and stridden off with a word.

He didn't want to be alone with the girl. He couldn't be alone with her.

With characteristic subtlety, Arya did not even wait for the island to fade from sight before seizing hold of the second pair of oars and rowing with him. Jaime told her, in as courteous a tone as he could muster, that her illness made exercise both unnecessary and inadvisable. The girl had glared at him with steel in her grey eyes, before declaring 'You're not very smart, are you?' and he had lapsed into silence after that, feeling like an idiot.

* * *

One night; years ago, but only days after she'd finally been let out of the cell that she had occupied since Littlefinger had discovered her living under Father's nose at Harrenhal, Jaime had found Arya alone in the practice yard; using a stick to hit a straw man. Cersei often called her 'little animal,' and Jaime had not been able to quarrel with the truth of that assertion as he had stood silently observing her; watching the alien grace in the litheness of her scrawny form and the small signs of skill in the amateurish whacking and grunting and poking with which she seemed to tear the air in half. Her anger was almost tangible; hatred bleeding out of every strike she made, and he had found his lips curling into a smirk at the absurdity of it: this skinny little insect, Ned Stark's daughter, alone in a practice yard, practicing. For what, exactly? In all likelihood she'd be shipped off and married the moment she flowered, and there wasn't a man in Westeros who would take her without the promise that she would cease to be who she was.

Thoroughly confused by the turn his thoughts had taken, Jaime had scoffed reassuringly at himself in the dark, causing the little animal to turn rapidly around and look for the source of the noise.

Her glare could have melted steel.

'Fuck off!'

Jaime had stared at her for a moment; unsure of having heard correctly.

'Fuck  _off_ ,' she had repeated; swiping at the empty air with her stick and clearing wishing it was his head, 'I'm practicing.'

'Practicing for what?' Jaime had chortled.

'For the day I kill you,' the girl had snarled.

Jaime had bitten on his teeth to stop himself from laughing, and had dropped into a low bow.

'Ser Knight,' he had said, and had walked away chuckling quietly to himself.

How very, very singular.

* * *

After that night, he regularly found himself searching for her, simply because anything she did was always bound to be more entertaining than the average mummer's farce. Most often, he would find her slumping mutinously amongst the other high born girls of two or three-and-ten that Myrcella had invited to tea; wilfully destroying every cushion or handkerchief that came her way and glaring at her embarrassedly-blushing sister while her needle stabbed hard at the material, as though it were really the straw man that she attacked every night in the practice yard.

Sometimes, Jaime would find her practising when he returned from night duty to the white sword tower. He reported it to no one – though he probably should have.

'Do you  _never_  sleep?' he once asked her.

' _No_ ,' the little girl snapped; slashing at the straw man.

'Why not?' Jaime drawled.

'There's things in my head,' she said.

'That makes two of us,' Jaime replied.

And before he could wince, or smirk, or do so much as wonder why the fuck he had said such a thing, the little girl had stopped her exercises – if you could call them that – and had turned to face him; her large grey eyes glinting murderously in the moonlight.

'What have you got in  _your_ head that keeps you awake?' she snarled, 'my brother? My father?'

Jaime tried, again, to smirk at her, and found that he couldn't.

'Aerys burning people alive,' he told her; shrugging; ' _that's_  what I've got in my head.'

His words made the little girl's face change.

He didn't stay long enough to observe how.

* * *

On the day of the riots that followed Princess Myrcella's departure to Dorne, Jaime went back for the little girl.

Everyone present had agreed that she wasn't important enough to be saved. They had her elder sister in custody, after all. Why risk more men trying to save a little brat that Robb Stark would probably be thrilled to be rid of in any case?

When Jaime strode off to the palace gates, Cersei screamed after him; telling him to stay where he was. Joffrey screamed after him too; threatening to have his head on a spike if he disobeyed him.

The only person who didn't try to stop him was Tyrion. The fact spoke volumes.

As he pushed and sawed his way through the rioting masses, Jaime asked himself what he was doing, and why. Seeking atonement, perhaps, for the little girl's brat of a brother? Hedging his own bets for the day that he dropped dead?

Or was it because she was a child, with things in her head that didn't belong there, and that he, an adult suffering from the same sickness, had formed some absurd protective instinct towards her that made him want to save her from more memory; more nightmare; more  _things_?

In that moment, he didn't know or care. He was the Kingslayer. He didn't need a reason to do what he wanted.

He found Arya stripped down to her shift in a stable; her gown a torn shadow in the dirt. She stood motionless and staring at the corpse of a man with his intestines hanging out of his stomach. In her hand, she held a blood-stained iron railing. She was trembling.

When Jaime spoke her name, her head jerked violently in his direction; a flash of cold, wolf-like yellow illuminating her grey eyes.

Then she fainted.

It happened so quickly that Jaime did not even have time to lunge for her as she crashed abruptly and brutally to the floor, as though all the strength had left her body in a single, dejected wave of emptiness.

Jaime crouched beside her and gently turned her over onto her back as the sounds of rioting and looting and raping continued heavy and grotesque in his ears. A bruise was forming on her cheekbone (a gift, no doubt, from the corpse on the floor) and as Jaime softly framed her face with his fingers, checking that the bastard hadn't broken any of her bones, her childish features suddenly arrested him, and made him stare.

Even in unconsciousness, her face bore a look of angry wariness; of hostility; of war; as though the imagined wrongs committed against her family were real, and strapped to her back like bricks.

As for the unimagined wrongs, their legacy was everywhere; in the lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes; at her forehead; at her throat; as though all her grieving and all her hating had boiled up from inside her and tattooed her skin.

It was like seeing the inside of himself on the outside of her.

Jaime felt his hand move of its own accord and smooth her hair from her eyes. She shifted slightly, as though somebody had tickled her nose in her sleep, and he put one arm around her waist and the other beneath her knees; lifting her.

What happened next was a blur; a conflagration of hearing, and moving, and seeing, and realising, in hesitant and agonising steps that made his senses spin and his stomach wrench within him.

He lifted Arya from the ground. A scream of anger, running footsteps and a song of unkempt steel sounded in his ears. He turned instinctively towards the noise. And suddenly he was face-to-face with a man, dirty, wild-eyed and bare-chested; a man with a dagger protruding from his chest.

The dagger, Valyrian steel with a golden lion's head for a hilt, was Jaime's own. Arya, still clutched in his arms, was the one holding it; her arm strong, stretched out, and complete as it clutched the hilt; the blade buried deep in the man's flesh.

Jaime was dimly conscious of the absence, at his hip, of the dagger's weight, as he and Arya watched the man fall; blood pouring from the man's chest and stuttering from his mouth like half-uttered curses.

Arya's body was bony and light – too light, for a girl of three-and-ten – but her hand, still clutching the dagger, remained perfectly steady; even as her other arm trembled and wound slowly about Jaime's shoulders; clutching at his armour until her knuckles turned white. An unconscious action, apparently, because the moment the bastard died, she began to struggle and argue like a two-year-old.

'Put me down!' she demanded; kicking like a drowning man.

'You're not strong enough to walk,' Jaime told her; tightening his grip on her.

'Let me  _go_!' Arya loudly insisted; her shout transforming into an undignified yelp as Jaime promptly let go of her and watched with no small satisfaction as she landed on her rump in the dirt.

She made no attempt to comment on his reaction, or even to get up; fearful, no doubt, that she would simply fall over again and prove him right, and for a while, the two of them simply remained where they were; Jaime glaring in annoyance at Arya; Arya staring, white-faced, at the corpse, with Jaime's dagger still clutched in her hand.

It occurred to him, at some point, that he ought to thank her for saving his life.

'Thank you,' Jaime grudgingly muttered.

Arya looked nonchalantly up at him from her place on the floor, and shrugged.

' _I'm_  going to kill you,' she declared, 'and no one else.'

* * *

When he heard her footsteps in the sept, he recognised them. The sound made him afraid.

For every one of the four years that he had known her, she would be in the practice yard at this hour, and nowhere else; stabbing amateurishly at her straw man. And yet tonight she was here – here where he was, standing vigil over his father's body; breathing in the old bastard's smell as he rotted away in the heat.

Jaime had stood there for five days and nights, only leaving Father's side when Tommen; his nephew, his son, had sprinted away during the funeral, unable to bear the stink. The sweetness in the boy's eyes had reminded him of Cersei; Cersei as she was before Robert, before Father, before the world. He had clung to the thought like a talisman ever since he had noticed it; letting it fill his thoughts and take him out of the heat, the smell, the days that he had left.

He had thought of it when Cersei had come to him last night – or was it the night before? – dressed as a servant girl; looking very beautiful and asking him to be her Hand. He had thought of it when he had refused her, and his twin had stalked away from him; calling herself a fool for loving him. He had thought of it for almost every moment since then. And yet he did not think of it now, with the girl before him. It trickled from his mind like the blood that maesters took to purge the afflicted of their illness.

Arya made no attempt to conceal her identity; standing before him in the breeches and the dirty shirt that she seemed to acquire daily no matter how many times Cersei had them confiscated. She was reed-thin and boyish, a birdlike child, and yet she was a woman, ready to be wedded and bedded to whichever bastard Cersei chose to ply her to. She was not plagued by the same crowd of suitors that had besieged her sister at five-and-ten, but then Sansa was the heir to Winterfell, and a beauty – a bore, but a beauty – and Arya, though possessing a certain fairness of face on the rare occasions that she took the trouble to wash it, had almost nothing to mark her out as a noblewoman, or even a woman, come to that; nothing barring her small, pathetic beginnings of breasts that probably wouldn't need restraining until she was five-and-forty.

'He stinks,' Arya commented; gazing down at Father as though remarking the weather.

'I'll mention it to the septons the moment they arrive,' Jaime replied; too exhausted and too hungry for Cersei to entertain the girl's bullshit; 'they haven't noticed  _at all_.'

'He's  _smiling_ ,' Arya disapprovingly continued.

'He's rotting,' Jaime corrected.

And he was.

The smell of death was getting worse. So was the heat. The air seemed to shimmer with it, like the drops of sweat beading on the skin of Jaime's face and the skin beneath his armour, as though a fever were burning him up from within.

He resisted the temptation to wipe his forehead and watched as the girl stepped closer to the corpse. She reached out for a moment, as though to touch Father's face, but her hand faltered at the last minute and came to rest on the edge of the open sarcophagus. He could see her sweat on the wood, on her face, in her dark hair; her eyes grey and strange as she beheld the Lord of Casterly Rock in death.

'It would have amused him,' Arya said, half to herself, 'forcing us all to breathe in his stench.'

'Even you?' Jaime snapped.

'Especially me,' Arya replied; still looking down at Father; absorbed enough by what she saw not to heed the jealousy in Jaime's voice, or the shame that marked his silence afterwards; the knowledge that he wanted her to turn her eyes on him and spit at him.

She looked suddenly and intently up at him, as though she had heard his thoughts. He watched her grey eyes sweep over his pale face, exhausted eyes and the fragile iron of his demeanour. He watched her see right through him.

Then her gaze intensified, and he realised, with a surge of anger and exasperation, that she wasn't hurt, or even irritated by him.

She was worried about him.

'Lannister, have you –'

'Arya,' Jaime snapped, 'if you tell me that I need to sleep, I swear I'll –'

'You need to sleep,' she cheerfully told him.

'Are you unfamiliar with the concept of a vigil, little girl?' Jaime seethed.

'Whose idea was this?' Arya demanded; ignoring him.

'It was my idea,' Jaime replied, and Arya laughed out loud; her chuckling echoing through the sept like obscene shouts of joy.

'It was  _Cersei's_  idea, wasn't it?' the girl demanded.

'You watch your fucking mouth when you speak of her,' Jaime growled, and he meant it.

Arya responded by rolling her eyes at him. The motion seemed to crown her slender form in candlelight; making light dance in her hair, and arms, and knees.

The heat was making his hair stick to his forehead. He could feel each individual bead of sweat forming, and breaking, and pulsing across the heat of his skull.

The ground was beginning to sway beneath his feet. He blinked, hard, and it steadied.

'How am I supposed to kill you if you die from exhaustion?' Arya was demanding; dramatically throwing up her hands.

'Careful,' Jaime smirked at her; 'you might make me think that you care.'

Arya's face fell. So did the candlelight; dropping to her feet, and then beneath them, and then up to her face again. She looked flushed, and hurt.

_Good._

'I promise you, I don't,' she snarled.

That satisfied him immensely. It even made his spinning head seem worth it.

'If you  _are_ here to kill me,' Jaime drawled, 'try not to get any blood on Father. He smells bad enough already.'

Arya's face erupted suddenly into a whirlpool of candlelight and darkness; the heat was crashing over him and filling his mouth like a deadly, boiling wave of exhaustion and anger and grief, and he was swaying before he could stop himself; his knees giving way beneath him; his arms clutching at the edge of the sarcophagus for support; and faster than he would have believed possible, she was there; her body pressing against his to keep him on his feet; her hands, callused and surprisingly strong, clutching at his fingers and pulling the weight of his body upwards; so that he wouldn't collapse in front of his father; so that he would stay upright.

The shock of her skin meeting his was like being struck in the stomach with a fist made of burning ice. It pulled him from the wave, and gave him air. He could feel the heat of her body radiating through her clothing, through his armour, through his skin, and on her face he could see her feeling it too.

It made her look as frightened as he felt.

She tried to pull her hands away. He locked his fingers with hers, and stopped her. Her eyes flickered upwards to his, and they were burning burning burning, with anger, with fear, with anger, and when she tried again to step back, he let her; remembering the last time they had been so close together; three years ago, when the news of the Red Wedding had reached King's Landing, and he had found her destroying her chambers with a chair; the glass of the mirror, the glass of the window, like a shimmering blanket on the floor, waiting, praying for blood.

She had screamed at him – for her family, for her father, for her brother – and he had let her. He had tried to touch her shoulder. She had hit him. He had let her. And afterwards, she had sat brooding in the window seat with no tears falling, her eyes flickering, every now and then, to where he sat on the floor, observing him; but not asking him to leave.

Eventually, she had come to sit next to him. He had put his hand on her shoulder. She had let him. He had put his arm around her shoulder. She had let him. Then, she had cried, and he had let her; holding her close until her tears dried up.

He told her about Aerys that night. Somehow, it had seemed like the right thing to say. She had sat silent as a wraith as he spoke; the grey in her eyes seeming to come alive with threads of molten silver.

'You're…not such a bastard, really,' she had said when he had finished, 'even if you are the stupidest person in the world.'

And they had sat there for a long while, the pair of them. The adult and the child with things in their heads; brought together by the act of stepping back.

She was stepping rapidly back from him now; pulling out of his touch; her cheeks and eyes aflame, and angry, and afraid, as though something was different – and it was – but it didn't matter; it _shouldn't_  matter. And as she backed further away, the painful shock of ice and fire that her skin had awakened in him began to fade, and he was weakening again without it; disappearing once more into the wave of heat; and he tried; he forced himself; he butchered himself; not to show it; not to show her that he wanted to breathe; to hold her close and feel her burn against him.

'You can't go a week without sleep,' Arya said.

'I must,' Jaime replied.

'Says who?' she demanded.

He didn't reply.

'Is that how it works?' Arya spat, 'she speaks, and you obey?'

'Fuck off, little girl,' Jaime said, 'you're making my head ache.'

She stared at him for a moment more, her eyes angry and afraid. Then she stepped down from the dais and left him, and he could feel the heat of the night coming over him once again; the dizziness; the nausea; the hunger. He wanted to run after Arya and kill her. He wanted her dead before he saw her again. Because burning skin, violent eyes, agony in separation, clarity in passion – he knew what that meant, and he didn't want any part of it. She was just a child, after all. Just a girl with things in her head.

He left the sept. He stormed to Cersei's rooms and fucked her till she screamed, and for every moment of it, he did not think once of his twin.

The shame came afterwards. Then the hatred. Then the wish that he had never gone back for her. That he had let the mob have her. That he had let her die.

He avoided her after that.

She noticed. She said nothing.

* * *

Jaime had only just started to remove his doublet in worry when the surface of the water was broken with barely a splash, and Arya appeared at the side; treading water and dropping the sparkling bloody brooch into the boat.

'Found it!' she proudly announced; ignoring his proffered hand and hauling herself back into the boat.

She collapsed unceremoniously into her place opposite him and made absolutely no attempt to put her dress on again; wringing waterfalls out of her dark hair as she watched him avoid her eyes. Seawater cascaded between her fingers and over her white shoulders to pool on the floor and trickle across her already-sodden shift; turning it the colour and texture of her skin that rippled with goosebumps in the wind; her nipples growing hard and erect as Jaime's cock was growing at the sight of her, and he determined to concentrate on rowing and on nothing else,  _forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards_ , and she was blowing a vagrant strand of hair out of her face and leaning backwards in a manner so utterly unconscious of the discomfort she was causing that Jaime felt rather tempted to take hold of her dress and plonk it on top of her head if she would only stop whatever in seven hells she was doing to him,  _forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards_. Arya stretched out a hand and touched the surface of the water with her fingertips; her arm a lovely line of muscle and bone that stretched out from the boat to the sea. He wanted to break her arm and make her scream. He wanted to make her stop.

'Put your dress back on,' Jaime growled; rather more viciously than he had intended, because the look that she shot him in return was positively venomous.

The silence between them was like glass, to be shattered with a look, or a word. Fury raged in her grey eyes, and was slowly and silently overcome by hurt and resentment as she stared at him; a proud, glorious, half-naked woman; a child with things in her head.

'Why don't you talk to me anymore?' Arya softly asked.

Rage hit him like a firestorm. Didn't she have eyes?  _Couldn't she see?_

Her eyes were locking with his in a challenge that he could not ignore; anger was boiling in the pit of his stomach and desire in every pore of his skin; and in his mind it only took an instant before he was across the space between them and on top of her; his tongue thrusting into her mouth and his hands grasping at her shoulders, her arms, her waist. In his mind, she didn't even try to stop him; her mouth soft and yielding and savage, lips and teeth both; seeking out his tongue and sucking on it while her hands clasped the back of his neck and the heat crushed his body to hers and sent yearning ripping through him as he pulled away from her gnashing lips and bit her neck; the sound of her moaning like a kind of surrender. In his mind, he moved lower; his tongue grazing her collarbone while she writhed and sighed and yanked her hips upwards to meet his. In his mind, he was biting her nipples until they hurt and sucking them until they throbbed. In his mind, he was tearing her shift and licking her cunt; nipping at her nub with his teeth and slipping a finger inside her, then two, then three and fucking her hard with his fingers until she screamed blue murder.

In his mind, he was moving slowly inside her and kissing her softly; kissing her wrists, her ankles, her eyelids, her nose, and making love to her so beautifully that she would finally understand that he loved her. That he always had.

In reality, he only saw her youth in greater clarity: how she was just a child, in spite of what she had seen. A child with things in her head.

'Put your dress back on,' Jaime repeated, not unkindly; leaning forward to hand it to her.

Arya lunged rapidly forward to snatch it before he could. Their foreheads almost banged together in the attempt. Jaime growled in annoyance and slammed the oars down in frustration; passing a weary hand over his eyes and seriously debating whether or not he should simply throw the girl overboard and be done with it. Instead, he lowered his hand, and found her dripping wet and beautiful and looking at him – really looking at him – and her eyes were like a thousand worlds as she leaned forward, touched his face and kissed him.

Everything disappeared but for her; but for her lips that nudged tentatively at his, softer than a whisper; but for the whimper that growled up from her throat as he coaxed her mouth open with his tongue; but for her hands that stroked his cheeks and ran into his hair as he kissed her, slowly and deliberately; but for her tiny, intoxicating mouth that whispered his name as he trailed his mouth along her jaw; making her arch her neck beneath him and sigh as his lips stroked her skin.

An instinct took hold of him, then. A knowledge. A certainty. If he allowed this to continue, she would be his forever. She would never leave him, and he would never leave her. He could taste it on her mouth; he could feel it in his arms encircling her waist; he could hear it in the memory of the months and months of deafening silence that had followed their meeting in the sept, and what he had felt there; what he knew  _she_  had felt there, with him.

She was just a child. A child with things in her head. He had no right to…this…thing between them…if they allowed it…if he allowed it…if they went together to that place… choice would be a forgotten thing; a meaningless thing. He could not take choice from her when she was too young to know what it meant. She was just a child. A child with things in her head.

Arya's fingers were burning up the back of his neck, and her shocked, gasping kisses growing more desperate as she felt his cock grow harder against her. Jaime kissed her one more time, softly; branding the shape of her lips into his mind; resisting the urge to plunge his tongue into her mouth once more and tear the bodice of her shift.

Jaime pulled back from her, and held her gently at arm's length until she understood.

She stared at him.

He did his best to ignore the naked hurt and fire in her grey eyes as he once again took up the oars; his heart dancing and throbbing painfully; as though she were still in his arms.

'Please put your dress back on, Arya,' Jaime said; 'it's cold out.'


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author note (please read!)
> 
> I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of support, and the number of good reviews and requests for more that have followed Something Takes a Part of Me. I have therefore decided to continue it as a multi-chapter fic. Please remember that this story was originally conceived as a one-shot, so I have absolutely no idea where I’m going in terms of an actual plot, and will literally be making it up as I go along! Yay! Yaiks! Anyway, I hope that you enjoy, and thanks once again for being awesome!  
> The story picks up a few months after where we left off.

 

**Ser Jaime Lannister, at King’s Landing, to the Lady Arya Stark, at the Dreadfort.**

__

Arya

Please don’t tear this up without reading it.

~~Though I don’t even know if they’ll allow you to receive letters, so I don’t suppose it bloody matters.~~

Well? Is returning to the North after all this time everything that you would have expected? Is the cold in your blood, or in your bones after being away for so long? Not that I know anything of the matter myself, but I would imagine that the fucking Dreadfort is a lot less comfortable than Winterfell, ~~and Winterfell was uncomfortable enough to begin with~~ , and after all these years in the South, ~~I can’t help but wonder if you’re freezing your skinny little arse off~~  I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re having difficulty acclimatising, Stark child or not.

Or perhaps I’m wrong. Is your lord husband showing you how to keep warm? As a true son of the North, Ramsay ought to be an expert at it by now, and I’ve heard that he has no shortage of enthusiasm for heat of any kind: the heat of blood, the heat of screams, the heat of flayed flesh, that sort of thing. But I won’t enquire further, not after your assuring me every day for the past four years that you can take care of yourself. ~~Until~~

The real reason I’m writing is ~~to make sure that that sadistic little shit Ramsay hasn’t hurt you~~

~~to apologise for~~

~~to tell you~~

to tell you that Cersei had a letter from Lady Sansa the other day, saying that life in Dorne agrees with her and that Lord Edric is fond of taking her riding ~~I’m not sure if there are any horses involved~~ and of presenting her with infinitesimal quantities of puppies on a regular basis. Cersei thinks she’s lying, and I must say that I agree with her. Puppies? Really? ~~Personally, I don’t give a fuck, but Cersei takes an interest~~ Could you shed any light on the matter? Cersei would write herself, but she’s so busy trying out her petty intrigues on Margaery Tyrell that she ~~doesn’t even have time for~~ no longer has time for private letter writing. I’ve told her to engage a secretary. She told me she’d heed my advice on such matters the day I accept to be her Hand. Really, can you _imagine_ such a thing? I might even accept for a day, then engage a secretary to take notes of every idiocy I commit and have them sent to you. That should cheer you up, ~~though I don’t even know if you need cheering up~~ trapped up there with your vicious bastard.

Please let me know how you get on. I’m _dying_ of curiosity.

Yours faithfully

Ser Jaime Lannister

Lord Commander of the Kingsguard

 

* * *

 

**Ser Jaime Lannister, at King’s Landing, to the Lady Arya Stark, at the Dreadfort.**

Arya

Don’t you have a steward, or a septa, or some intellectual mediocrity charged with reminding you to reply to your letters? Or is there a shortage of ravens in the North since Greyjoy’s joke of a victory at Winterfell ~~? Has something happened to you? I can~~

What should I write to you about, so that Tyrion won’t plague me about wasting his parchment?

I could always tell you about Joffrey. A fascinating topic of conversation, wouldn’t you agree? He has discovered a new game. It involves shooting crossbow bolts at the heads mounted on the dry moat. I stand roasting in my armour for hours, watching him shoot the same targets again and again and listening to good Queen Margaery applaud him constantly. When she joins him at play, it’s the most revolting spectacle that could be imagined: her standing there in full court dress, pretending each time that she doesn’t know how to use the fucking crossbow so that Joff can put his arms around her, and she can whisper in his ear and giggle as he kisses her neck. I’d throw up in my helmet just to make a point ~~if it didn’t involve getting my hair dirty.~~ , if the logistical complexity of such an action weren’t more trouble than it’s worth. I wish I could say I was glad you weren’t here to see it, but then I’d be lying.

Send me a fucking letter, so that I may at least be sure someone hasn’t flayed the skin off your body.

Ser Jaime Lannister

Lord Commander of the Kingsguard

* * *

 

 

**Ser Jaime Lannister, at King’s Landing, to the Lady Arya Stark, at the Dreadfort.**

Arya

Cersei is bothering me day and night about how Sansa is getting on in Dorne. I have tried to obtain the information independently in several different ways. Lord Varys has nothing for me except ‘the Lady Sansa is well. Lord Edric is enchanted with her, and beds her regularly.’ _Really?_ That could mean anything. I’ll wager Ramsay is enchanted with you and beds _you_ regularly, and that could _also_ mean anything.

In my hopeless desperation for information, I even went so far as to send a raven to Prince Doran Martell, and ended up receiving a reply from his brother, Prince Oberyn (the one who’s famous for fucking half of Westeros). In any case, the ‘reply’ constituted nothing but two rolls of parchment’s worth of absurd regrets that Lady Sansa and her husband would not yield to Prince Oberyn’s repeated entreaties that they join him and his bastard paramour in bed. What use is such information to me? And imagine what would happen were your sister to fall prey to such depravity? It would be all your fault.

Look to your silence, little lady.

Jaime

* * *

 

**Ser Jaime Lannister, at King’s Landing, to the Lady Arya Stark, at the Dreadfort.**

Arya

My congratulations on your good-father’s victory over Stannis Baratheon. I don’t suppose you know that Lord Roose and I met once, many years ago? I didn’t much care for him. He wouldn’t drink any wine. ~~I~~

As to this latest victory, the rumour about court is that all the survivors were flayed alive, whether they’d surrendered or not. Personally, I do not believe it. That’s a tremendous amount of corpses to leave for the crows, and besides, can you imagine the stink? Though I don’t suppose you’d have to, being a Bolton yourself. Is it cold enough up North for the corpses to freeze? Or do they simply rot, like all other dead men?

Anyway, I just thought I’d remind you, in case you’d forgotten, that today is the anniversary of the Red Wedding ~~. You are in my thoughts.~~ ~~I’m sorry.~~ Tonight in the capital, there is to be a great feast, and Joffrey has engaged a troop of actors from the Free Cities to perform a re-enactment for the court. What I’m the most curious about is how they plan to chop off your brother’s head and replace it with his direwolf’s without injuring anyone. Tyrion plans on being drunk by the time they get to that part. ~~Perhaps I’ll join him. I’m glad you’re not here to~~

How are you marking the occasion up North? In similar fashion, or is your good-father simply planning on massacring each person that attends the celebration?

Do tell

Jaime

* * *

 

**Ser Jaime Lannister, at King’s Landing, to the Lady Arya Stark, at the Dreadfort.**

Arya

I’m sorry. ~~I would never~~

 

~~I did not mean~~

~~I know~~

 

My previous letter was in very poor taste, and I apologise.

~~I’ll never forget~~

I remember what you looked like, the day the news reached King’s Landing. ~~A child who had lost everything.~~ You were like a ghost. A vengeful and angry ghost with the ability to destroy furniture, but still a ghost.

Are you alive? Can you speak? Can you walk? Can you fight? Can you at least fight?

Are you allowed weapons? Are you allowed life? ~~Are you allowed~~

~~Just w~~

~~Fuck it~~

Jaime

* * *

 

**The Lady Arya Stark, at the Dreadfort, to Ser Jaime Lannister, at King’s Landing (unsent).**

Jaime

Leave me alone.


	3. Chapter 3

The North stretched for hundreds of miles in all directions like a sleeping frost giant, and though Jaime wore the winter uniform of the Kingsguard, he could feel the cold mercilessly clawing its way through his flesh, and bones, and blood; as though it had grown fingers of Valyrian steel.

It was five years since Arya Stark had left the capital to marry Ramsay Bolton, the Bastard-No-Longer of the Dreadfort; five years since their marriage had brought the North back into the fold; and five years since Jaime had begun to write letters; knowing all the while that she would never write back. But now, with winter coming, King Joffrey wished (or had been manipulated by Queen Margaery into wishing) to visit every province of the Seven Kingdoms before the skies darkened; to see first-hand what progress his lords had made in putting life back together since the war.

The North had been last on Joffrey’s list; partly because he would have to cross the other six kingdoms to reach it; mostly because the king, despite his love of tormenting Arya at every opportunity, had always nursed a secret terror of the girl stemming from the day that Nymeria had almost ripped his arm off.

Arya had told Jaime about it in the practice yard, one evening when she had still been a child.

_When I could still speak to her without wanting her._

‘I wish Nymeria _had_ ripped his arm off,’ she had spat; her grey eyes glowing in the moonlight.

‘If she had, then you’d be dead as your sister’s wolf, little girl,’ Jaime had replied.

She had scowled childishly at him, and had wordlessly gone back to attacking the straw man with her stick; the outlines of her bones peering through her sweat-sodden clothing like shy children. Then the night sky swirled abruptly into day, and the smell of her sweat became the smell of the sea, and she was opposite him in the boat, a child no longer; glaring at him as he glared at her; her small hands reaching forward to snatch her dress from the bottom of the boat; her small hands touching his face and curling in his hair as she kissed him; as he kissed her; as deeply as a man starved of air who had only just realised that he couldn’t breathe.

The memory made Jaime feel almost as frightened of her as Joffrey was: gripping him with a sinking, gnawing, consuming fear that somehow failed to drive out the memory of what she had once looked like, felt like, tasted like, and to only make it seem more real.

‘You’re dreaming, brother,’ a familiar voice observed, and Jaime started as Cersei, clad in a magnificent fur coat, pulled her horse in alongside his.

Her _horse_?

‘Are you _riding_ , sweet sister?’ Jaime asked; delighted at the prospect of a respite from his thoughts, ‘should I send for a maester to be sure you’re alright?’

‘Don’t be tiresome, or you’ll make me sorry I came at all,’ Cersei breezily replied.

‘Since when do you ride anywhere?’

‘Since my wheelhouse decided to sink itself into a sea of mud and Joffrey would not call a halt to see to it.’

‘How disobliging of him. Why haven’t you taken him over your knee?’

Cersei tossed her beautiful head in annoyance, glared at him with something like disappointment, and promptly gathered the reins in her gloved hands.

‘You will excuse me while I find somebody less wearisome to converse with?’ she icily proposed.

 _Cersei, don’t go_ , Jaime thought.

‘I love you too, sweet sister,’ Jaime smirked.

She galloped away from him without replying; leaving him completely alone with the powerful, nauseating sense of unease at where they were, and why, and he glanced hopefully up and down the line for Tyrion, and hopefully, laughter, and wine.

But his brother was nowhere to be seen, and the past was fucking everywhere – inside him; around him – and he remembered the day that Arya had left King’s Landing; dragged from her chambers and chained up in the carriage that would take her North; screaming obscenities and fighting so hard that it had taken three men to hold her down.

Jaime had stood, and watched, and done nothing; his fingers clutching so tightly about the hilt of his sword that they had ached for hours afterwards.

_If I try to stop it, they’ll know._

_If I try to stop it, she’ll know._

_And even if I_ do _stop it, who will I propose in Ramsay’s place? Myself?_

_I’m Kingsguard._

_I’m the Kingslayer._

_I’m Cersei._

_I’m the South._

And as he remembered the sound of her screaming, and the clanking of her chains as she struggled against them, the first towers of the Dreadfort appeared out of the fog, perching like hideous stone dragons making their nests on the hills. And the dread was swelling like a black tide in his stomach, and he was closing his eyes and pushing it away and calling up visions of Cersei; his twin, his other half; her limbs entwined with his as they lay together; her ivory nakedness flushing as he held her hard against him.

His cock stirred in his breeches. The dread remained where it was; lodged in his stomach like a stone, and spreading to the rest of his body like poison; and as they drew nearer to the Dreadfort; to those bleak, freezing, monstrous mountains of stone that seemed to blanket all the world in boiling, screaming silence; he found himself wishing that they had sent the child to hell rather than to this place. At least in hell, there was fire. At least in hell you could scream, and know that someone could hear you.

Jaime galloped to the front of the line and took up his place behind Joffrey, Margaery and Cersei, even as the royal party clattered and trudged and complained its way through the groaning wooden gates of the Dreadfort; even as Prince Tywin and Princess Roslyn continued to chatter animatedly to each other despite the noxious atmosphere, and scowled deeply as their septa bade them hold their tongues and sit up straight.

A crowd of oddly-shaped and oddly-complected peasants was assembled in the crumbling, muddy and woefully-provincial forecourt, presided over by Roose I-don’t-partake Bolton himself, and the largest woman that Jaime had ever seen.

Lord Roose went to his knees. His household and his large lady followed suit. Joffrey smirked at them, and did not bid them rise, and Lord Roose bade him welcome in a deep, carrying voice that showed a steely, Northern indifference to the spoiling of his best breeches.

‘You are welcome to the Dreadfort, Your Graces,’ Lord Roose declared, ‘our House is honoured by your presence. We hope you found the roads passable.’

‘Fucking _awful_ , since you’re asking,’ Joffrey replied, fussily removing his gloves and still not telling them to rise, ‘it’s been _so_ many years since this place was made civilised, and yet you people still haven’t found a way to build a decent –’

‘Now, now, my love, you exaggerate,’ Margaery interrupted, offering her hand to Lord Roose and motioning to the household to stand, ‘you have a beautiful country, my lord. Pay no attention to my royal husband’s barbaric suggestion that you spoil it with roads.’

‘Thank you, Your Grace,’ Lord Roose replied, bowing stiffly and making no further remark upon the queen’s handsome speech, ‘if you will permit me to present my wife, the Lady Walda –’

The enormous lady curtseyed, and tittered.

‘– and my grandson, the Lord Lucion Bolton of Winterfell.’

Joffrey, Margaery and Cersei stared blankly downwards at the empty space indicated by Lord Roose, and when the man’s unfortunate grandson – four years old, five at most – was thrust into the light from his hiding place behind Lady Walda’s conveniently-large girth, his face bore an expression suggesting a fervent desire to murder every person within ten feet of him.

‘What a pretty little man you are,’ Margaery swooned, ‘before long you’ll be breaking hearts.’

‘Do you have crossbows in the North?’ Joffrey indifferently enquired.

‘Where’s the Imp?’ Lucion asked, and was promptly clouted over the head by his grandfather and told to hold his tongue.

Jaime stared at Lucion as Lord Roose continued the traditional formalities, and Lucion, sensing his gaze, stared furiously back at Jaime as though he rather wanted to put a maggot hole in his belly. But when the boy’s eyes fell on Jaime’s sword, and on the colour of his armour, his entire face lit up with all the idiocy of a young boy drunk on imagined glory and killing without fall of blood.

He had a mop of curly black hair, and alabaster skin that flushed red in the cold.

He had large grey eyes, so wild that at times they seemed almost silver.

His annoyance at not having his question answered seemed to boil out of him like lava, despite his age.

He was a Stark down to his fingertips.

He was her son.

‘I regret that my son and good-daughter are not here to greet you,’ Lord Roose was droning on, ‘they went hunting two days ago, and have been gone long enough for me to fear that some misfortune might have befallen them. I have sent out a search party, but we have yet to –’

A sudden, chaotic, overly-raucous thundering of hooves from the gate split Lord Roose’s words in half, like a morning star through a watermelon. The Lord of the Dreadfort coloured in both embarrassment and anger; Lady Walda blushed an unbecoming shade of scarlet; and as Jaime turned in his saddle to observe the cause of the commotion, Arya and Ramsay Bolton galloped into the yard; the latter with a wild, manic grin on his face; the former with a face like stone, and the bleeding corpse of a little boy tied to her saddle.

Jaime swallowed in horror as the horses came to a halt and the corpse proved itself to be a living thing; mewling pitifully and struggling against the ropes that bound it. Arya, without so much as a glance in the child’s direction, sent her dagger slicing through the ropes, so that the little boy plummeted downwards into the mud and twitched weakly, as though he were already dead.

Ramsay gave a hoarse, obscene giggle and grinned gleefully at his wife, who sheathed her dagger and smiled wryly at him in return, and as Jaime stared at the pair of them, with their matching leathers, preposterous, milky Northern complexions and cruel smiles, he felt bile rising rapidly and horribly in his throat; poisonous as unspoken words.

He could see that she knew he was there. He saw it in the way that she refused to look at him; in the way that her eyes, sweeping over the company, consigned an empty space to the place that he was.

He didn’t recognise her. He couldn’t see her…not in her eyes that were dead and empty; not in her silent, voiceless, expressionless face; not in her hair that hung wild and tangled to her waist, more black now than brown, as though it had lost its warmth. Any outside part of her that might still have been an inside part of him was gone, disappeared, suffocated; overwhelmed and trodden underfoot by the five years that she had been here, survived here, not died here; by the little boy lying prostrate in the mud; by her son who was watching her with guileless confusion in his eyes; by the husband at her side that was known from Dorne to the Wall for his cruelties, into whose hands Jaime had practically delivered her.

By doing nothing. By saying nothing. By acting like a fucking honourable man, even when the choice that he had so badly wanted her to have had been snatched away from her.

The things in her head had won. And he had helped them do it.

‘I can’t _stand_ the wailing of small children,’ Joffrey was drawling; his nose wrinkling in disdain at the sight of the prostrate child, ‘if he’s done something wrong, then why haven’t you killed him?’

‘My dear little wife was in a merciful mood,’ Ramsay replied, with horrible enthusiasm, ‘we were all set to put a spear in his back when she pulls up and says ‘My love, I’m bored with chasing children. Why can’t we wait till he has longer legs?’

Joffrey, untroubled both by the anecdote and by Ramsay’s impertinence in speaking to him without an introduction, stared for a moment at the Bastard-No-Longer of the Dreadfort, before bursting out into a delighted cacophony of shrill guffaws, as though the joke were the best he had ever heard.

Ramsay, encouraged, enthusiastically joined the king in expressing his mirth, and laughed until he was bent almost double in the saddle; his howls mingling obscenely with Joffrey’s and ringing up to the Northern sky like prayers for blood and death, until the pair of them sounded less like two men laughing, and more like a pack of delighted crows descending on a battlefield after a massacre.

Arya sat perfectly upright in her saddle and said nothing as Ramsay and Joffrey continued to shriek delightedly together; her violent grey eyes flickering from Joffrey to Cersei and slowly turned the colour of pitch, and when Ramsay finally stopped laughing, wiped his eyes, and took her hand and kissed it, she wound her fingers through his and obstinately remained silent; as though speaking at all would honour the company in a way she did not wish to.

 _Why is she taking his fucking hand?_ Jaime silently demanded.

 _He is her husband,_ a voice in his head replied.

And still Jaime stared at her, willing her to look at him, and show him…that she wasn’t _this_ ; that she hadn’t become this…

If he heard her voice, he’d know. He’d know no matter what she did or said.

But still she did not look at him, and still she did not say a word, though propriety and her status as the future Lady of the Dreadfort dictated that she should. Cersei’s lip curled into an expression of spectacular disdain, Arya’s silence grew ever more pronounced, and Lord Roose made a commendable effort to remedy the situation by commanding Arya and Ramsay to dismount, and be formally introduced to the King, the Queen and the Queen Dowager.

‘Your Graces,’ Lord Roose began as Ramsay dismounted, ‘may I present my son, the Lord Ramsay Bolton of Winterfell, and his wife the Lady Arya.’

Ramsay bent into a flamboyant bow that would not have looked out of place at a mummer’s farce.

Arya, who had remained in the saddle, performed no reverence and showed no acknowledgment of any kind. She cast a sweeping, contemptuous glare over Joffrey and Cersei – a final silence, a final insolence – and spurred her horse away from them; galloping off towards the stables without a word passing her lips.

Lord Roose commenced the arse-licking immediately, and swore that his good-daughter would be punished for her insolence. Cersei vowed that she would hold him to that, and burrowed deeper into her furs. Ramsay enquired whether the King would condescend to visit the torture detachment; an offer that was readily accepted. And Jaime stared silently at the ground as his skin began to burn with the agony of loss: with the knowledge, with the certainty, that Arya Stark was dead.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be warned that this chapter contains scenes of physical abuse and rape.

Ramsay followed her into her chambers. She ignored him and approached her dressing table; her fingers threading through the labyrinth of glass vials that sometimes caught the light on the snow. She uncorked milk of the poppy and drank deeply. The numbness took her. The pain stayed where it was.

The scars on her wrists were aching again; as raw and as painful as they had been at the beginning; when she had worn her chains for days and weeks and months; her arms and legs streaked with her own blood as Ramsay pounded away inside her; trying to make her cry; drilling harder when she didn’t utter a sound; crooning sweetly at the blood that lingered in her smallclothes for days afterwards; as though the traitorous red stains were the cries and the screams that he failed to elicit from her; that he wanted to hear on her lips.

Then one day at breakfast – eight months into their marriage – she had reached for the mulled beer at the same time as her husband, and their hands had bumped together.

She had recoiled from Ramsay’s touch as though she had been scourged, and to her astonishment, he had done the same; snatching his hand away from hers and plunging it deep into the pocket of his jerkin, before rapidly pushing out his chair and storming from the room. And in that moment she had realised – from the look on Ramsay’s face; from the fear in it – that her husband had come to live for the screams of pain that she never gave him. Her only resistance. Her only wall.

The realisation had been like receiving a dagger as a surreptitious nameday present from some caring older sibling, and ignoring Lord Roose’s testy demand as to what ailed his son, she had risen from her seat and followed Ramsay to his chambers.

She had found him lounged in a chair with his breeches tangled about his ankles and his cock bulging in his hand.

‘What do you want?’ Ramsay had growled; saliva flying from his lips.

She had walked silently towards him, hitched up her skirts and straddled him.

‘I want you to fuck me bloody,’ she had whispered; when in truth, she had wanted to vomit.

But his cock had impaled her body like a spike skewering a severed head, and she had screamed and cried as Ramsay had torn at her with his teeth and nails, and fucked into the soreness between her legs like a pig rutting in a barnyard.

She had never worn chains again, and had been lifted from the deepest of the seven hells into the second-deepest.

_For all the good it’s done me._

‘Joffrey seems a pleasant enough cock!’ Ramsay bouncingly declared from somewhere behind her.

‘Joffrey chopped my father’s head off,’ Arya murmured; replacing the milk of the poppy on the table as Ramsay’s arms locked hard around her waist and pinned her arms to her sides.

Immediately, she struggled. Immediately, he tightened his grip.

‘Is little lady sad?’ he crooned into her ear; innocent and sincere as a new-born babe.

‘Little lady need to rest before the feast,’ she retorted; trying to elbow him in the stomach; ‘let go of me and go away.’

‘Do you think that Joffrey would hunt a girl with me if I asked him to?’ Ramsay mused; as though she had not spoken.

‘Ramsay, you promised me.’

‘But I grow so _bored_ , my love. What am I to do when I’m bored?’

‘Try reading a book.’

Ramsay hummed tunelessly, and tightened his grip on her; his fingers gripping her skin as he kissed her neck.

‘The Queen Dowager amuses me,’ Ramsay mumbled against her as she once again began to squirm in his arms, ‘soft as a maiden’s cunt, and convinced her skin is made of chainmail. Do you think she’d be open to correction?’

‘No, I _don’t_ think she’d be open to correction,’ Arya growled in frustration; her fingers digging into Ramsay’s forearms, ‘she only fucks people who obey every word that comes pouring out of her cunt mouth.’

‘Whom do you mean?’ Ramsay asked.

‘Don’t act like you haven’t heard the rumours,’ Arya snarled, ‘now let _go_ of me.’

Ramsay leaned into her and whispered; his lips brushing her ear; his cock hard against her arse.

‘Shall we see if they’re _both_ open to correction?’ he murmured.

‘You can stab the sister with your cock, if you want,’ Arya snapped, ‘the only thing I’m stabbing the brother with is a carving knife.’

‘Without fucking him first?’ Ramsay hummed; sounding surprised.

‘I don’t like blonds,’ Arya said.

‘ _And_ _I don’t like him_ ,’ Ramsay snarled abruptly into her ear; in a tone that she knew, and feared, and hated herself for fearing, ‘ _he looks at you_.’

‘Really?’ Arya matter-of-factly asked; brutally swallowing the fear as it welled up within her; ‘shall I make him stop?’

Ramsay was holding her hard enough to crush her ribs to powder.

‘I can’t breathe,’ Arya whispered.

Ramsay’s hand closed over hers, and he gently slid their fingers into place; locking them together.

‘ _I_ will make him stop, my love,’ he said, ‘there’s no need to worry your pretty head about it. Tell me, if I put his eyes out, would you wear them around your neck?’

Once again, she tried to break free, and once again, he stopped her; the rack and wheel of his arms turning her struggles to chains about her waist that tightened with every attempt to break free.

‘I’ve wanted to gut Jaime Lannister since I was one-and-ten,’ Arya snarled, raking over Ramsay’s knuckles with her nails; ‘ _I_ will make him stop. _You_ won’t touch him.’

‘ _Pleeeeeeease?_ ’ Ramsay squealed; rocking her back and forth like a child.

‘ _No_ ,’ Arya snapped.

‘Why?’

‘He’s mine.’

There was a brief silence, followed by the near-tangible sound of the thoughts in Ramsay’s mind clicking softly into place. Then he seized the collar of her coat and slammed her, face-first, into the wall, with the force of a butcher thawing a frozen side of beef. And she was tasting blood in her mouth and seeing blood in her eyes and swiping at Ramsay’s face with a dagger torn from her waist as he plunged a fist into her stomach and another into her eyes.

For a moment, the world was red. The dagger slipped from her fingers as her strength left her; as the back of her head crashed into the floor, and pillars of grey mountain fog began to dance across her vision; like pain made people.

Ramsay was on top of her, and his hands were scarring her wrists. For a moment, she saw his face, sliced open from lip to ear. And yet he was smiling at her, like he had won. Like he would always win.

She spat in his face. It made blood pour down his cheeks like rain. And he dealt her a blow that made her vision crumble, and her thoughts turn black inside her.

‘He can’t be yours, my love, because you have nothing,’ Ramsay whispered to her, ‘nothing, nothing, _nothing_.’

And his fingers were at the laces of her breeches, and her silence was rising up. Her only resistance. Her only wall.


	5. Chapter 5

The house of a man famous for murdering his guests _and_ for ‘not partaking’ was the last place on earth that the Lord of Casterly Rock had expected to find a thirty-year-old Dornish red. Nevertheless, Tyrion _had_ found it – hidden away in a corner of the yard when he had stepped outside to relieve himself – and though Tyrion imagined that the wine was no doubt intended to impress some higher person than himself (probably Joffrey), he could not stand the idea of leaving such an inestimably glorious vintage out in the yard as though it were bilge water. He was doing the wine’s owner a _favour_ , surely, by ensuring that it was drunk before it met with a fate that usually befell treasures left in precarious positions.

Tyrion, his head spinning with viticultural delirium, put this argument to Jaime as the two of them stood together in a dark corner of the great hall of the Dreadfort, waiting for the welcoming feast to begin. Jaime laughed with a little too much enthusiasm, pounded Tyrion theatrically on the back and congratulated him on being a devious little shit. Tyrion stared gravely up at him and said nothing. His brother had never been a good actor. His need to pretend had always been greater than his ability to be subtle.

Tyrion had always known of the curious, yet deep-set friendship that had sprung up between Jaime and Arya Stark since her return from Harrenhal. He had known it from the mysterious smile that would flicker across his brother’s face each time the girl spoke, or frowned, or laughed. He had known it from the way that she had always seemed to pop up in their private conversations as an example to prove or disprove a point about women, or courtesy, or hostage-taking; or as something for Tyrion to laugh about when Jaime, furious, would tell a story about some or other argument that he had had with the girl and demand his opinion on the matter; and when the girl turned out to be right (and she almost always turned out to be right), Jaime would accuse his brother of treason, kick over his chair and slam the door behind him as he left the room in a whirlwind of righteous rage. Tyrion had never quite understood how such a friendship could even exist, given the disastrous situation of their Houses and the considerable difference in their ages and dispositions. Nonetheless, he supposed it was harmless enough. His brother had never had many friends, and Tyrion had never known another person in greater need of them.

Then Father had died, and Jaime had never mentioned her again.

Any attempt on Tyrion’s part to ask questions, or even to say the girl’s name was deflected with the same swiftness with which one might dismiss the potential humanity of a mortal enemy or a killer of children; and the _smile_ that had always accompanied the mention of her, or the sight of her, was replaced by a boiling, smouldering, loathing stare; to the point where Jaime could scarcely stand to be in the same room as her.

Tyrion had made the assumption (perfectly justified, in his opinion) that his brother had said or done something stupid, and had been so mercilessly berated for his stupidity that his pig-headed arrogance had overcome all other considerations, and had somehow succeeded in transforming years of esteem and regard into hatred and intolerance. Tyrion had also made the assumption that it would blow over in a matter of days, knowing Jaime, and that everything would continue as normal once his brother had swallowed his pride.

But it hadn’t blown over – not the situation; not Jaime’s seething refusal to talk about it – and Tyrion had soon found himself placing all his hopes on the supposition that the poor girl’s departure for the North could not come soon enough.

But when Arya Stark had left King’s Landing to marry the Bastard-No-Longer of the Dreadfort, Jaime’s agitation had only worsened; shaping itself into a crimson, bone-deep circle of silence, sleeplessness, and violent, motionless fury: a perpetual burning at the stake without being able to move or scream; a self-imposed death within, like giving oneself over to a master torturer with the words ‘kill me as slowly as you can.’

At one point, Tyrion had begun to entertain serious fears that his brother might do himself harm.

‘Do you want to kill yourself?’ he had asked; one evening after too much wine.

Jaime had briefly considered the question.

‘I’m too fond of myself to do that,’ he had snorted in reply.

‘Brother,’ Tyrion had hastily ventured; the wine making him bold; ‘may I ask –’

‘No,’ Jaime had snapped, ‘you may not.’

 _That was five years ago, and things have scarcely improved at all,_ Tyrion thought; glancing worriedly up at Jaime as his brother drained yet another glass of wine; his cheeks flushing with a false internal glow; and for a while the two of them stood in silence, sardonically observing the remnants of Northern nobility that were congregating like crows in the space around Cersei, Lord Roose and Margaery: watching, intently and jealously, to see which lord or lady would be approached first; staring, when they grew bored of watching, at Joffrey and Ramsay; who were deep in conversation and standing rather closer together than propriety dictated; Joffrey blushing like a maiden and Ramsay gazing at him as intently as a man in the process of seducing one, all the while sporting a hideous cut on his cheek that he seemed to have acquired in the three hours since the court’s arrival.

_Shaving accident?_

Tyrion shook his head in bewilderment. He was more concerned with the consequences of allowing matters between two such revolting individuals to proceed any further than he was with Lord Ramsay’s steadiness of hand, and was about to make a mental note to that effect when the double doors groaned open, and Arya stumped gracelessly down the stairs and into the hall, wearing the same dirty riding clothes that she had worn earlier that day.

Tyrion could not help but grin at her impertinence. Then he noticed her face.

Bruises blackened the girl’s face like great splotches of paint. Her skin was torn in several places – on her cheekbone; on her forehead – and her lip was bleeding almost carelessly; as though she had forgotten about it. She crossed the hall slowly; walking steadily and determinedly despite an obvious desire to limp; and Tyrion found himself choking down both indignation and horror at the sight of her curtseying awkwardly to her husband, who smiled widely at her and offered her his arm.

‘Allow me.’

She took it, and smiled back.

‘My lord.’

Tyrion was joining with the rest of the hall in eavesdropping on their conversation – ‘my love, what has _happened_ to you?’ ‘you have a short memory,’ – when a sudden movement above him attracted his attention, and he was leaping rapidly forward and seizing hold of the back of Jaime’s cloak as his brother – his face dark, his eyes terrible, and his sword and dagger already in hand – began to storm out of their corner and towards Ramsay; apparently with every intention of impaling him on his sword and pulling his intestines out through his arsehole.

‘Jaime, _no_!’ Tyrion growled; digging in his heels and thanking the gods for the obscurity of their position.

‘ _Take your fucking hands off me,_ ’ Jaime growled in return; his tone nothing short of vicious as he wrenched his cloak from Tyrion’s grasp, and snarled when his brother promptly threw his arms around his knees instead.

‘ _Come outside_ , _Jaime_.’

‘ _Don’t make me fucking hurt you –_ ’

‘ _Come outside NOW._ ’

Jaime tried once more to step around Tyrion, and was rewarded for his efforts with a crushing stamp to his foot, and Tyrion was cursing his height and beginning to wonder what would happen if Jaime did indeed grow angry enough to run him through, when Lord Lucion was announced; stamping into the hall beside his septa and looking thoroughly displeased by his new leather doublet and freshly-trimmed hair.

The sight of the boy made Jaime freeze.

‘Brother, come outside,’ Tyrion insisted, ‘ _come_.’

Jaime looked down at his brother and slowly lowered his sword, and Tyrion seized his chance to grab hold of Jaime’s cloak once more; only releasing it when they were safely out in the corridor.

‘You _fool!_ ’ Tyrion hissed, ‘ _what if you’d killed him_ – ?’

‘Don’t pretend that you’d go into mourning if I had,’ Jaime spat; beginning to pace.

‘– your host’s fucking _son_ , Jaime?’ Tyrion persisted, ‘ _in front of hundreds of people?_ ’

‘Fuck my host and fuck hundreds of people,’ Jaime snarled, ‘it would be justice, and you bloody know it.’

‘Justice for what?’ Tyrion demanded.

Jaime stopped pacing, and began to glare at the walls around them like an animal trapped in a cage.

‘For…the Red Wedding,’ he stammered, ‘for the bloody Red Wedding.’

Tyrion stared at him.

_I do not believe it._

‘For _her_ , do you mean?’ he asked.

Jaime’s eyes were wide, angry and humiliated.

_I do not believe it._

‘That vicious _cunt_ did _that_ to her –’ Jaime was growling.

‘I know, Jaime –’ Tyrion said; trying to sound soothing.

‘– every person in that fucking hall knows it; half of them probably _heard_ it when it was happening; and they stand there drinking wine and being breezy and looking at her as though _she’s_ the one who –’

‘I know, Jaime,’ Tyrion repeated; hoping that his assent would calm him; but his brother was beginning to pace again; folding his arms; unfolding them; sweeping his hands through his hair and breathing so heavily that Tyrion was alarmed by it.

‘Jaime, why don’t you sit?’

‘I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.’

Jaime repeated the words like a litany; like rhyming words, unrhyming words, to keep his sanity whole, and Tyrion felt the thing in his chest maul itself a little more, and confusion sink deeper into his blood.

 _If he loved her, why didn’t he marry her?_ Tyrion thought, _why did he let her…why did he allow her to come here…why…_

Cersei’s high, false laugh echoed out from the depths of the hall, making both of them jump, and Tyrion took hold of Jaime’s cloak again and gave it a gentle tug.

‘Jaime, sit down.’

Jaime wrenched his cloak from Tyrion’s grasp.

‘ _Don’t_ ,’ he growled.

‘Brother,’ Tyrion said, ‘I’m sure your mind is on higher things, but if you do not sit – on your haunches, at the very least – then I cannot embrace you.’

Jaime stared at him; as though Tyrion’s words were the strangest he had ever heard. Nevertheless, he slumped onto one of the stone benches that lined the corridor and let Tyrion hug him; leaning into his brother like dead weight. He was deathly cold, and shivers blanketed his body like snow.

‘I’ve failed her,’ Jaime murmured, ‘I’ve failed her.’

 

* * *

 

Jaime didn’t know how long he sat there.

It was long enough for him to tell Tyrion to leave him and return to the feast. Long enough for the sounds of revelry to gutter out like candles. Long enough for the candles themselves to be snuffed out for the night, and for the Dreadfort to grow so silent around him that no one, not even the servants, stirred abroad.

He remembered the day that she had left King’s Landing. _The day that she was dragged from King’s Landing._ The sound of her screams, and the clink of her chains. Her small frame held fiercely and cruelly in place as the men forced her into the carriage, then chained her into it.

And himself. _Me._ Standing there. Doing nothing. Thinking. Doing nothing.

_If I try to stop it, they’ll know._

_If I try to stop it, she’ll know._

_And even if I_ do _stop it, who will I propose in Ramsay’s place? Myself?_

_I’m Kingsguard._

_I’m the Kingslayer._

_I’m Cersei._

_I’m the South._

_Excuses._

Jaime felt his head drop into his hands.

_I saved her life to bring her this. To allow her to be brought to this. What does that make me?_

_What_

_Am_

_I_

_…_

The sound of rapidly approaching footsteps rang out like firecrackers in the night, and yanked Jaime from his reverie like hands pulling a drowning child from a lake. He looked up; the faint half-dark of the torches piercing, then restoring his eyes, as Ramsay Bolton came shambling down the corridor and into the light; a flagon of wine clutched in his fist; an ill-fitting nightshirt ill-concealing a diminutive but muscular frame where flesh and bone coiled together like serpents.

Jaime, remembering his courtesies like a good little boy, promptly rose to his feet and bowed.

‘My lord,’ he intoned.

Ramsay, his pale grey eyes swimming with drunkenness, was instantly on his guard: a dagger appearing in both fists; his body adopting a fighting stance as he squinted ahead of him and let the flagon of wine drop to the floor.

‘Who’s there?’ Ramsay hissed.

‘The Stranger,’ Jaime replied.

And he danced through the blades like a man born to it, and buried his sword in the Bastard’s chest.

Blood drenched Jaime’s clothing like hot wine as Ramsay collapsed backwards; his body crumpling to the floor with a metallic screech as the sword point protruding from his back drew a white line on the wall behind him; a white line daubed with blood.

Jaime could smell Ramsay on him; a scent of sweat and blood that went bone-deep. And he thought of Arya walking every day in that stench and knowing that she would never be free of it, and he stepped forward once more – one step, then another – to finish this.

‘This,’ he murmured to Ramsay’s semi-prostrate form, ‘is for her.’

The dying man was staring at the air above Jaime’s shoulder, and smiling toothily; every one of his teeth painted red.

And when Jaime turned, Arya was there; pale and silent in her riding clothes; watching him draw his dagger; her eyes wide with fear.


	6. Chapter 6

Arya walked slowly forwards to where Ramsay lay dying against the wall; his daggers falling useless at his sides and Jaime’s sword still piercing his stomach.

And everything in Jaime screamed silently out to her to be careful; to back away from him; to run and keep running. Nevertheless, he remained silent, his voice inexplicably ripped from him as the girl, the young woman, the person, the human being that he had once betrayed crouched in front of Ramsay and stared; her fingers moving to her husband’s cheek and awkwardly stroking it; like a child touching a wild animal that it feared had not been tamed.

Ramsay smiled at her apprehension; his grin widening as her fingers drew patterns in the blood on his face.

Then she wrenched one of Ramsay’s daggers from his fist and stabbed him; once, twice, three times, four times; the blade gouging holes in the Bastard’s stomach and spraying her with blood.

Ramsay tried to push her away; pounding weakly on her shoulders and chest as she thrust the blade into his stomach again and again and again; his hands slumping heavily to the floor as the strength bled from him; his pale and trembling fingers groping carefully in the dirt, and closing slowly around a gleam of dirty steel. The second dagger.

Jaime’s heart dropped out of his chest, but somehow continued to beat – wildly; madly – as he lunged forwards, seized Arya around the waist and wrenched her away from Ramsay in a whirlwind of himself and her; turning his back on the dying man to shield her body with his as she continued to stab silently and violently at the empty air.

Jaime felt a sudden pain erupt across his lower back; as though someone had dragged a needle across his skin. The ache flared briefly, then died, and as he turned once more in the Bastard’s direction, this time with the benefit of a few feet’s distance, Arya grew perfectly still in his arms; her back small and skeletal against his chest, like the body of a starving child.

Ramsay lay dead against the wall. His pale grey eyes were large, and staring upwards into nothing, as though the blood-drenched walls and floors were repugnant to him. Jaime gently deposited Arya on the ground, knowing her dislike of being carried, and she turned, very slowly, to face him; her clothing as red as the walls.

She gazed at Jaime as completely as she might have done earlier that afternoon, were it not for what he had done; were it not for what he hadn’t. He saw the angry young woman of five years ago: in the practise yard with her stick, in the sept with her hands, in the boat with her mouth, with her voice, with all of her. And his heart was wrenching in his chest, and choking him with the passage of too much blood, and his nails were grinding hard into his palms with the effort of standing still; with leaving her be; with not picking her up again and enfolding her and coming undone with relief that she was still here; that she was still her.

And slowly, she began to disappear again; behind her survivor’s walls. And slowly, Jaime felt himself sink again into the place that he had made for himself; too weak and too afraid to pull her back.

The pain came so quickly that he did not even have time to brace himself against a wall.

It boiled up within him like a wave; a wave made of iron and Valyrian steel that seemed to split his bones asunder and tear them from his flesh like thorns; leaving only skin, blood and maimed flesh for the fires that burned high and excruciating through every inch of what was left of him. His knees were crumbling to dust beneath him; crimson ghosts were roaring up across his vision and turning to agony as he felt his skull crack open against the earth; and he could feel Arya’s fingers ghosting over his body and digging into his skin; her words at his ear; her words on the other side of the world as she shouted, as she whispered, as she cried out:

‘Did he cut you? Jaime, _did he cut you?_ ’


	7. Chapter 7

He couldn’t see. The air was colder, danker, and his entire body felt possessed by it; the cold brought on by the shivering; the shivering brought on by the pain: his skin scraped off his bones with the ends of his own ribs.

She was trying to put something to his lips. A bottle, or a vial. He tried to open his mouth. He couldn’t.

Her fingers slipped between his teeth, and he tasted her blood in his mouth; her fingertips fighting his body to bring back the breath that no longer existed.

_I’m hurting you…hurting you…I…_

Then his jaws clamped down on the bottle, and the liquid gushed nauseatingly into his mouth; burning through the white hot paralysis of pain like fire through snow.

* * *

 

When he awoke, the low ceiling, narrow walls and lingering, numbing, all-consuming desire to throw up momentarily made him think he was in hell. The seventh circle, of course. Nothing less for him.

He turned out to be seated, not in hell, but in the next worst thing: against the wall in cupboard or a closet of some kind, too narrow to stretch out his legs and too deep to have a hope of being anything but freezing fucking cold.

Arya was seated opposite him, taking repeated and liberal swigs from a bottle of something that looked suspiciously like milk of the poppy, and staring blankly at him as though he were some absurd yet compelling creature that had wondered into her home unannounced. The low light made her skin seem copper, and the bruises on her face the colour of charcoal. Anger rose within him again…then the realisation that now, there was no one to be angry with except himself.

‘What happened?’ he asked; his voice softer than he had intended.

Arya opened her mouth hesitantly, then closed it again, as though she were unaccustomed to speaking.

‘Ramsay…’ she murmured; her eyes flickering away from his as the corners of her mouth turning gravely downwards; ‘Ramsay… enjoys poisoning things and sticking them in people. He keeps the antidotes so he can bring them back before they die.’

The words crushed the inside of Jaime’s skull.

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘So that they live with the fear that he will do it again,’ she replied.

Jaime stared at her, and felt the clink of chains ring out once more in his head; binding his memory to the rack _saying nothing, doing nothing_ ; and he realised that _this_ – this thing that they had done together, that stained their clothes a mutual shade of red – it left them with nothing but memory now, now that the immediate agony; the immediate cause of it, was gone. They had nothing left but the months of silence and the bursts of speech in between…and then, what he had done. What he hadn’t done.

‘I tried to kill him five times,’ Arya murmured; more to herself than to him; her eyes burning with a raging flame that had not been present before; ‘all five before Lucion was born. The first three times, I was caught, and punished. The last two…I had a dagger in my hand one time, and a pillow in my hand the other time…and I couldn’t do it. I could only stand there…’

She took a swig from the bottle, swallowed hard, and stared harder; as though by simply looking at him, she could perceive the truth.

‘Why did you do it?’ Arya asked.

‘Why did you help me?’ Jaime question-answered; the words ‘anger and guilt’ failing to form on his lips.

Arya tightened her grip on the bottle, and said nothing, while Jaime stared questioningly at the foul-tasting, milky-white stuff that she was pouring down her throat like a child left alone with a jug of custard, and flinched.

‘Wine doesn’t work anymore,’ Arya remarked; answering his question before he asked it; reverting, in spite of everything, to the manner of the past; her voice enfolding a raging silence, a complete absence of self-pity, desire for comfort, or condemnation, that was worse than anything else she could have said.

Her fingertips trailed swathes of bloody redness across the glass surface of the bottle, and for the first time he remembered them between his teeth, forcing his mouth open to pour the antidote down his throat.

Jaime reached for her hands without thinking. She flinched away from him. The blood fury in her eyes quenched itself like candlefire killed between human fingers, and she glared and glared and glared; as though it were the only strength that she had left.

Jaime imagined that the appropriate thing to do would be to put his hands on his knees, or somewhere else where she could see them, and sweetly murmur ‘I would not hurt you’; whereupon the poor, wounded maiden would stretch out her hand to him and allow herself to be tended; blushing brightly each time one of his fingertips touched hers and glancing surreptitiously at his handsome face each time he looked away from her.

Instead, he found himself drawling ‘for fuck’s sake, if I were going to break your bloody hands, don’t you think I’d have done it by now?’ and rolling his eyes at her while his heart beat itself bloody inside his chest at every stupid, uncouth word that came pouring out of his smart mouth…every word that made him sound like a bastard who could watch a fifteen-year-old girl be sent to hell and do nothing.

_A bastard who could love a fifteen-year-old girl and send her to hell anyway._

A tentative, yet commanding scrape of calloused skin against his fingertips called his eyes downwards, and Arya’s fingers began to curl slowly inwards; drawing his hand into her palm.

Jaime slowly took her hand in his, and cradled it in his palm so that hers faced upwards. Her skin was boiling; boiling like the blood and the bite-marks that marred each of her fingertips; bite marks from his teeth; from saving him. He looked up at her again as he traced the lines of her palm, and while every line of her face was broken, grazed or shattered in some way, her eyes were burning bright like night fires; an inch…a single inch…of the person he had known. The person that had trusted him.

His thumb grazed her wrist, and felt the unmistakeable coarseness of scar tissue there. His fingers touched her shirt cuff; the past rushing once again into the space between them, and when he pulled her sleeve rapidly up to the elbow; the skin of her wrist was marked with a red bracelet a good three inches wide.

A scar left by chains.

Jaime had barely felt horror coiling black and anguished within him when the breath was knocked from his lungs and his back slammed into the wall, and Arya was holding a knife to his throat; her legs coiled beneath her like a wolf preparing to spring as her right hand dug painfully into his shoulder; bracing herself against him.

‘ _Don’t touch me there_ ,’ she growled; vapour pouring from her mouth as her teeth bared themselves; her eyes seeming to flash yellow in the gloom; ‘you _never_ touch me there. _Never_.’

Jaime’s pulse raged red and violent against the blade that lingered at his throat like a lover, but no other part of him moved; nothing except his chest that rose and fell, faster and faster; as his instinct to fight back began to engulf him; as the heat of her body became the heat of his.

He could have overpowered her easily. He didn’t.

She’d been threatening to kill him since she was one-and-ten, and she had much more reason now than she had had then. He wouldn’t begrudge her his life if she wanted it.

Arya seemed to realise this as she sat there; perched on his lap like some murderous, childlike bird disappointed by the idea of a kill coming too quickly. She waited for him – her wide grey eyes like Valyrian steel – her left hand perfectly steady as she grasped the blade; her right hand trembling as she gripped his shoulder; her thumb brushing the naked skin of his neck like a single, scalding spark.

‘Fight back,’ she rasped.

Jaime mutely shook his head and said nothing.

‘Please,’ Arya whispered; tears beginning to form in her eyes.

‘It is…’ Jaime murmured; resting his head against the wall; ‘it is as it should be.’

The knife pressed down harder on his throat, nicking him; and her face, as his blood began to flow, would not have been more terrible to look upon had he stuck a dagger in her. The tears nestled between her eyelashes broke free; coursing down her swollen cheeks like streaks of paint. Jaime, scarcely aware of what he was doing, slowly raised his hand to wipe them away.

She stood up before he could touch her: without warning and graceless as ever as she replaced the dagger at her waist, and before he could speak, or even think, she had stormed from the room in a tempest of silence and slammed the door behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updating will be very sporadic over the next few weeks, as I am going into a hellishly busy period at school. Apologies in advance, and many, many thanks, both for reading and for general awesomeness! :-D


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awesome people, I am back!  
> Sorry for the lack of updates; things have been so crazy at school that they defy description. Hopefully, another such period of insaneness is not due again for a good long while, so this, my longest hiatus ever, will probably not occur again for a good long while. Thank you so much for your patience!  
> We pick up on the morning after Ramsay’s murder.

When Lucion woke up, he found Mother lying on top of the covers with her arms around him. Often, when she kissed him goodnight, he would beg her to stay with him, because there were things in the dark that he couldn’t fight by himself. Often, she would refuse…but when he woke up the next morning, she would always be there, holding him tightly as he slept. Sometimes he even pretended to be asleep, so that she would stay longer, and he wouldn’t have to eat his stupid breakfast and go to his stupid lessons and spar against stupid boys that he could have beaten with his eyes closed.

This morning, Mother’s face was purple: purple and pink, with some blue in between. She must have fallen down the stairs again. And he wanted to spit at her, as he wanted to every time that she fell down the stairs, or missed her footing in the dark, or banged her own head into the wall: ‘I’m not a child anymore. I’m _five_.’

But he would never do that, because he knew that it made her happy; thinking that he didn’t know; that he didn’t notice what Father did to her.

It had only happened in front of him once. He’d been two or three, and Father had been teaching him a new game. It had involved lying on his stomach in bed and seeing how quickly he could squirm out of his breeches using only one hand. Lucion hadn’t understood the point at all, and hadn’t had the opportunity to discover it, because no sooner had he wriggled out of his breeches and cheered at his own cleverness that the door had opened, and he had heard Mother’s voice.

She had screamed like the red men dying in the yard.

She had screamed and screamed and screamed, and called Father a lot of things that Lucion didn’t understand; Father had begun to shout back at her, his face turning red as blood; and Lucion had tried to explain that it was only a game; that there was nothing to be upset about. But she had kept on screaming – screaming and screaming and screaming – until Father had drawn his sword and bashed the hilt into the side of Mother’s head. She had fallen to the ground – dead, Lucion had thought – and he had run to her, still without his breeches, and shaken her and cried and screamed at her to wake up. Then the corridors around them had begun to echo with the sounds of running feet, and Father had shoved him away into a corner; spitting at him to put his trousers back on and to stop crying like a whore being broken in.

Lucion had never found out what it meant, but after that day, he had never seen them fight again. He would only know because of what Mother would look like the next morning: purple, and pink, and blue.

Mother was pulling gently at his left ear.

‘Time to wake up, wildling,’ she whispered.

‘I don’t want to get up,’ Lucion grumbled, ‘why can’t I stay in bed?’

‘Because you’re far too young to stay in bed all day.’

‘When will I be old enough?’

‘When you’re eighty.’

‘That’s too long to wait.’

‘So get up, then.’

‘I will if you tell me a story first.’

Mother sighed audibly, and Lucion’s heart sank.

Then she smiled, and nodded silently, and he sat rapidly up in bed and wrapped his arms eagerly around his knees, waiting.

‘Shall it be about Ser Rickard the Brave?’ Lucion asked.

‘If you like,’ Mother answered, and she launched immediately into a story that he had never heard before; a new one from out of her head.

‘Good King Willem had been fighting a war against his brother, Bad King John, for years and years and years,’ she said; her eyes beginning to cloud, ‘millions of people had died already, and so much blood had been spilled into the soil of both their kingdoms that the crops had failed, and kept on failing. The people of King Willem’s kingdom would have starved if he hadn’t been putting grain away every year, to feed people in case there was a famine, and it might have continued that way forever. Then one day, King Willem realised that there wasn’t enough grain left to feed the people for another year, so he decided that it was time to heal the breach between him and his brother, Bad King John, because if the war ended, then there would be no more blood in the soil and the crops would grow again. So he sent the Lord Commander of his Kingsguard –’

‘Ser Rickard the Brave!’ Lucion interrupted; clapping his hands in excitement.

‘Ser Rickard the Brave,’ Mother conceded, ‘to negotiate with his brother, and to help end the war.’

Lucion pouted. This didn’t sound like a very interesting story.

‘When Ser Rickard arrived in Bad King John’s kingdom, it was the hottest day of the year, even though it was autumn, and winter was coming,’ Mother continued; her voice fading to a whisper as she spoke the words; ‘there was an enormous welcoming party waiting for Ser Rickard at the docks, with the King, and the Queen, and all their children, six princes and six princesses. Unlike his brother, Bad King John hadn’t been saving grain in case the crops failed, so behind the courtiers and the septons and the knights and all the other people that King John had brought along to welcome Ser Rickard to his kingdom stood the people, starving. They were thin as skeletons, so it looked as though King John was accompanied by an army of the dead.’

Lucion liked this more.

‘King John saw the look on Ser Rickard’s face as he welcomed him to his kingdom,’ Mother said, ‘and the horror that he saw there did not please him. So on the way back to the palace, he tried to make himself look good; talking about all the bread he was giving out and the things he was doing to help his people, and make their lives better. But all Ser Rickard could see was the crowd of skeletons lining the streets; the living, breathing proof that King John was a liar, and a bad man. It eventually turned out to be a very good thing that Ser Rickard was looking at the crowd, for if he hadn’t been, then he wouldn’t have seen the man.’

‘What man?’ Lucion demanded.

Mother remained silent; her mouth curling into a smile at his agitation.

‘ _What man_?’ Lucion screeched.

‘The man who was racing through the crowd, towards the king, with a dagger in his hand!’

‘Did he kill him?’

‘No.’

‘Awwwwwww.’

‘He didn’t kill him, because Ser Rickard drew his sword, and killed the man before he could kill the king.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he was an honourable man.’

‘It’s stupid.’

‘Honourable men usually are.’

‘Do _not_ call Ser Rickard stupid!’

‘Don’t ask so many questions, then!’

Lucion crossly folded his arms and waited for her to continue.

‘When the crowd saw that Ser Rickard had killed one of their own to save Bad King’s John life, it went mad with rage, and attacked the king and all the people that were with him. People started to fight in the streets – the skeletons even began to fight each other when they couldn’t get to the king, because they were angry and hungry and tired of being angry and hungry; tired of their king telling lies; tired of their king doing nothing. Now in his heart, Ser Rickard rather wanted to let the crowd get at King John, because he deserved to die for what he had done. But he knew that King Willem loved his brother, even though he was a bad man, so he helped King John’s own Kingsguard get their sovereign –’

‘What’s a sovereign?’ Lucion interrupted.

‘A king,’ Mother replied, ‘so Ser Rickard helped get the King, and Queen, and all their children safely back to the palace while the riot continued outside the castle walls. No sooner had they arrived that they noticed that one of the princesses was missing.’

‘Oooooooh!’ Lucion crowed.

‘There’s no need to sound so excited about it!’ Mother exclaimed.

‘Can she be dead?’ Lucion asked.

‘No,’ Mother told him.

Lucion snorted in annoyance. This wasn’t much of a story.

Mother’s big grey eyes had turned sad, and damp, like water, and he wanted to tell her that she didn’t need to be so upset about telling a stupid, boring story. She would think of a better one next time. It wasn’t the end of the world. He wouldn’t hit her, like Father would have. But she was carrying on, and he didn’t want to interrupt her; even though he was sure that the end of the story wouldn’t be much better than its beginning.

‘The…the missing princess,’ Mother was stammering, ‘was the youngest and ugliest person in the entire family, and King John didn’t love her the way that he was meant to love his daughter, because she fought when she was meant to listen, and was always dirtying her face and tearing her clothes. So he said to his guards: ‘when she comes of age, it will be impossible to make a good match for her. She will die an old maid, or a septa, bitter and envious of other people’s happiness. Better that she dies now, at the age of one-and-ten. It’s more merciful, really. Much more merciful.” And the Queen began to plead with Bad King John, screaming at him that he couldn’t abandon the princess to the mob; and suddenly Ser Rickard was furious with himself that he had helped save a man who was evil enough to stand by and let one of his own children die. So he strode off towards the palace gates with his sword in his hand; determined to find the princess and bring her back, even if he died in the attempt.’

Lucion felt his jaw drop.

‘Ser Rickard would never do that!’ he insisted, ‘that’s _stupid_!’

‘He found the princess surrounded by bad men,’ Mother said softly; as though she couldn’t hear him; ‘half of them were laughing at her, and the other half were hitting her, and all of them were fighting amongst themselves, deciding whether they should kill her, or sell her back to the King for a hefty price. Eventually, the men decided to cut her throat, put her head on a spike and parade it outside the palace walls, to show the king that they weren’t scared of him. They walked towards her with their knives drawn, and she was so weak from them hitting her that she didn’t even have the strength to move.’

Lucion leaned forward in anticipation; surprising himself. He wasn’t the sort of boy to care about what happened to ugly princesses. Princesses were meant to be beautiful. The ugly ones had much better die.

‘One of the men took a handful of the princess’ hair and yanked it back, so that her throat was taut and white and glistening like snow, while his friend took a dagger and scraped her throat with it; enjoying the way that he drew out drops of blood while she cried and trembled; never knowing exactly when her life was going to end.’

Lucion’s fingers fisted in the sheets. This was wrong. This entire story was wrong.

‘One of the bad man’s friends grew impatient with him. ‘Get on with it!’ he shouted, and all the other men laughed. The man with the dagger didn’t like being laughed at, so he drew his dagger rapidly to the princess’ throat –’

_This is wrong; this entire story is wrong –_

‘– and screamed as blood poured from his mouth, and the tip of Ser Rickard’s sword popped out through his chest; skewering him like a stuck pig. His friends tried to run, but Ser Rickard chopped all their heads off – ’

 _This is more like it_ , Lucion thought.

‘– and kicked the heads aside in his haste to get to the princess, who was falling to the ground in a dead faint.’

 _This is a story for girls_ , Lucion thought.

‘Ser Rickard caught her as she fell. And he looked at her…and he saw that she was indeed the ugliest girl he had ever seen in his life. Her face was too long and her eyes too big, and her hair was an unremarkable brown colour, like mud after the rain. And when the ugly little girl awoke, she looked up at Ser Rickard, and smiled at him, and said ‘take me away from here, Ser. Please take me away from here.”

 _I wouldn’t want to take a girl like that anywhere_ , Lucion thought as Mother continued.

“Your royal father is the king here,’ Ser Rickard said to the princess, ‘taking you away will only mean more war. Taking you away is not honourable.’ And the princess didn’t even protest, or beg him to reconsider, because she knew that he would never change his mind; that if she had been beautiful, and desirable, like her sisters, Ser Rickard would have started a thousand wars, merely to do her will. So… she got very sad, and cried a lot.’

When Mother didn’t continue, Lucion stared at her in astonishment.

‘That’s _it_?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s stupid!’

‘Why?’

‘Why didn’t the stupid princess save _herself_? Why didn’t she just run away?’

Mother’s face was whiter than snow, and her eyes were sad and damp again, but the tips of her fingers were hot as she stroked Lucion’s hair and told him, in a soft voice:

‘Sometimes people can’t help being weak.’

Lucion was about to tell her that such people needed a good kick up the arse when the air was torn suddenly asunder by a blood-curdling scream that seemed to cut through Lucion’s flesh and pierce the marrow of his bones.

Mother leapt to her feet as the scream came again; ringing through the Dreadfort like a chorus of demons weeping at the fall of hell. Lucion’s heart began to beat very quickly, so quickly that it almost choked him, and when he looked at Mother’s face, he could see all of his own fear.

‘Murder!’ the voice screamed, ‘murder and butchery!’

Lucion relaxed at once. He was familiar enough with both murder and butchery to be beyond caring much about either. Mother, on the other hand, was pale as an innocent who had never seen either, and Lucion suddenly realised that there was no curiosity in her face. Her fear was the opposite of his. She feared what she already knew.

‘Stay here,’ Mother told him, drawing her dagger, and as she strode towards the door, Lucion was seized by a sudden, unaccountable desire to beg her to stay; to stop her from facing whatever had caused the screams from hell; from the tumult that shook the halls of the Dreadfort as though it were a time of war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The concept of this chapter was inspired by a scene from 'Little Dorrit.'


	9. Chapter 9

The cold slammed into Arya like a mace as she ran barefoot in her shift with her dagger boiling in her fist, towards the place of the screams; the place where she had set herself free.

Joffrey was on his knees cradling Ramsay’s body, and as he let out a howl, Arya realised that it was _Joffrey_ who had screamed rather than the servant girl or chamber maid that she had spent all night imagining might be the one to discover him.

Lord Roose was staring down at the king with barely-concealed disdain; his eyes like dirty ice that smouldered at the realisation that _he_ should be the one howling in agony; not some spoilt child-adult that had known Ramsay for less than twenty-four hours.

Arya could not bring herself to think about the implications of Lucion’s being left heir both to the Dreadfort and to the Wardenship of the North. Such thoughts had nested in her mind all night, like hornets of dread and foreboding and fear, so she silently joined the assembled crowd of people in staring bemusedly at the weeping king and in wondering what was going to happen next. And as she stared, her eyes began to take in the true nature of the scene: its redness.

She and Jaime had made much more of a mess than she had noticed at the time. The floor beneath Ramsay’s body, and the wall behind it, looked as though several pots of crimson paint had been slung at them by a two year old. The eerie whiteness of Ramsay’s skin was almost reptilian against it….that eeriness that she had always hated; the whiteness of his cock as he fucked into her and the redness as he fucked out.

 _I’ve covered your whiteness with your own red today, you bastard_.

And as she stood looking at her dead husband; at the hole in his chest; at the holes in his stomach, and at Joffrey gingerly touching each of them as he cried, she realised that she had finally done it. She’d killed him. Not like those other times, when she had had the chance to, and had stood helpless and unmoving. She’d killed him. She’d finally killed him. He was dead.

Arya felt a shadow stir in the crowd, and looked up.  Jaime was there, looking down at Joffrey, looking down at the work they had done together, and for a moment, she almost smiled; the small part of her that was still five-and-ten, and in love, and stupid.

Then he looked at her with his eyes that struck like hammers, and she remembered what had shot through her when his fingers had touched the scars on her wrists; the panic, the anger, the violation that she had felt, because her scars were there because of him, because he had abandoned her; because he had let them bring her here; no better than Ramsay; no better.

A burst of swearing, shoving and jostling announced the arrival of the Bastard’s Boys: Ramsay’s pets; Lord Roose’s pets; the men that had held her down in the beginning, when Ramsay had been too hard and too lazy to take the trouble to chain her up. Ramsay had never let them share her with him, a concession that she refused to be grateful for, and as she remembered how her bruised body had felt, sprawled naked and writhing beneath their hands, the same shame and anger that she felt each time she passed one of them in the halls swept through her, and to her mortification, she found tears beginning to sting her eyes and her skin beginning to crawl, infested with vermin, with filth, with _this place_ and these people that Jaime had sent her to, JAIME, who was no better than Ramsay, no better; _I need milk of the poppy –_

But every time she looked up at him, she wanted to smile, and every time she felt the corners of her mouth turning upwards, her heart shattered; and through her tears, she could see Lord Roose watching her.

She let the tears come and determined not to look at Jaime again, _Lord Roose suspects something, he suspects,_ so she looked at the Bastard’s Boys instead; ridiculous, unkempt and macabre in their various stages of undress, carrying whichever weapons they had happened to seize on their way out of their beds. Sour Alyn clutched a meat cleaver and wore only his smallclothes, Yellow Dick’s cock was only half-concealed by an undersized sleeping shift, _I need milk of the poppy_ and Skinner carried his whip with him; a weapon whose touch Arya could still feel in every bone in her back; in every groove; in every scar as Margaery arrived; pushing aside the Bastard’s Boys to get to Joffrey’s side; ignoring them as they formed a scraggly circle around their chief and stared dumbly at the corpse, and then at Lord Roose; like the body of a festering maggot that had lost half its head and had no idea if the other half still functioned.

Margaery had knelt beside Joffrey, and had begun to shush him and comfort him and hold him to her ample bosom; her chest heaving as Joffrey buried his face in her teats and began to blubber.

Arya felt eyes on her once more; a gaze that drew her own upwards like a siren song, and it was Jaime again, the stupid, yellow-haired shit; spotless, like she was; white, golden, not marked by a single drop of blood, his gaze enveloping her as he beheld her, bare-armed, barefoot and vulnerable in her shift.

Sour Alyn and Skinner were both staring at her as though they wanted to bend her over Ramsay’s corpse and fuck her now that he couldn’t stop them.

 Jaime stared at her as though he wanted to drape a cloak over her shoulders.

 ‘Arrest him!’ Joffrey shrieked.

Arya’s lungs turned to stone as her eyes ripped away from Jaime’s towards the mad king, _he knows, he knows, he saw, somehow he saw, someone told him_ , and a gaping void opened up within her; slicing her insides like battle-axes _I’m going to die, he’s going to die, dear gods no, Lucion, what will they do to Lucion –_

But Yellow Dick was the one being pounced on by the Kingsguard, and he struggled as madly as Arya’s thoughts within her as she watched without understanding.

‘Your _Grace_?’ Lord Roose was protesting.

‘I WANT THIS MAN ARRESTED AND EXECUTED FOR THE MURDER OF YOUR SON!!!’ Joffrey bellowed.

‘My love, you cannot –’ Margaery began.

‘Did you just say I _cannot_?’ Joffrey shrieked.

‘I am touched by your grief, Your Grace,’ Lord Roose calmly ventured, ‘but there is no evidence that this man –’

‘Ramsay told me that this son of a whore had designs on his life; he told me so himself, _me_ , the KING!’ Joffrey screamed.

‘You can call yourself Emperor of the Fucking Universe, it won’t change the fact that I didn’t touch the bastard,’ Yellow Dick unhelpfully interjected, ‘wish I had, though. He used me bad.’

‘Hold your tongue, idiot!’ Lord Roose snapped, _I need milk of the poppy_

‘Is there treason in this house that you can protect such a man as this?’ Margaery demanded.

‘I WANT HIM EXECUTED!!!’ Joffrey screamed, _I need milk of the poppy_

‘Your Grace,’ Lord Roose continued to protest, ‘as Lord of the Dreadfort, I must be allowed a certain – ’

‘You may be the Lord of the Dreadfort, but I am the KING!’ Joffrey bawled, _I NEED MILK OF THE POPPY_

And Margaery was trying to calm Joffrey, and Joffrey was striking her across the face and crying as she crumpled to the floor, and Arya’s head was beginning to spin, with the cold beneath her feet, with the sounds of her past and her horror, with Ramsay as he lay dead, with _too lucky, too lucky by far, Lord Roose knows, he suspects, I need milk of the poppy, I need it_ , and worst of all her head spun with Jaime; with his infernal fucking gaze, with his near-death and near-life, with the words that he had murmured to Ramsay as he plunged his sword into his chest: ‘This is for her.’

_He did it for me._

‘Mother?’

_He’s too late._

‘Mother?’

_Too late._

‘Mother?’

Arya looked slowly downwards. Lucion was there. The colour was draining from his face as he looked at his father, dead.

‘I told you to stay in your chambers!’ Arya despairingly snapped.

‘Why has Father turned red?’ Lucion managed to ask, before falling to the floor in a dead faint.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today is my birthday. Here is a present for you!

They went straight from the ‘trial,’ to the hanging, to the interment. Was that the way they did things in the North? Jaime watched the lid close on Ramsay Bolton’s sarcophagus, remembered Yellow Dick’s strangled yell as he dropped into the empty air with a rope around his neck, and decided that he did not want to know.

The worst thing of all was how none of it made him feel better. He had imagined that it would; knowing that he had murdered Arya’s tormentor; knowing that she knew that it was him, and that he had done it for her. But all that he saw, all that he felt each time he beheld her or thought of her, was his own shame a thousand fold; her screams as they dragged her into the carriage and chained her up; her silent screams across the years that were the fault of his own excuses: people finding out, her finding out, _Cersei_ finding out, and realising that he didn’t love her anymore; that he hadn’t for a good long while…

Cersei stood opposite him at the interment, with Margaery and Arya and Lady Walda and all of their ladies. Her golden hair hung undressed about her shoulders in a gesture of mourning, but her breasts peeped almost impertinently from the bodice of her black gown; her beauty almost defiant; and suddenly he wanted to embrace her, if only out of a desire to be embraced in return.

The boy Lucion had insisted on standing next to his mother despite Lord Roose’s command that he follow tradition and stand with the men. Just before the interment, when the entire household had been assembling in the crypt and awaiting the arrival of their liege lord and their unaccountably-sobbing king, it had been Lucion himself who had marched up to Jaime and told him this; bobbing up and down like an eager child begging for a sweet.

‘I won’t do it!’ Lucion had declared, ‘I’ve said I’ll stand with my mother, and that is what I’ll do!’

For a moment, Jaime had been so flabbergasted at the child’s speaking to him that he hadn’t known what to say.

He had settled on a hearty-sounding declaration of ‘good lad,’ and on mussing the boy’s hair in a gesture of imagined camaraderie; his heart choking on itself as he realised that the thick mop of black hair between his fingers felt the same, to the touch, as Arya’s did.

‘Thank you, Ser Rickard,’ Lucion had squeaked, his pale face flushing with pleasure at Jaime’s approval, and –

‘Lucion!’ Arya had barked, ‘come here!’ –

 And the boy had scurried off before Jaime could tell him his real name.

The interment itself had been a sombre, mostly-silent affair. Joffrey had stood tearful, red-eyed and rather quiet in comparison to his earlier bawling ( _he can’t have met Ramsay before – could he?_ ). The king’s appearance was in stark contrast to Arya’s, who was deathly pale and dry-eyed; her son’s hand in hers as a thousand conflicting emotions, including grief, flickered across her face: grief, and a total incomprehension of why she was feeling it. And Jaime thought back to the day that they had arrived at the Dreadfort; when she had ridden into the yard, cruel and indifferent, with a struggling child tied to her saddle; a child whose bonds she had cut, and whom she had watched fall into the mud as though he were a sack of potatoes rather than a human being.

_Perhaps my initial instincts were right. Perhaps she is more like Ramsay now._

He pushed the thought away, felt ashamed and looked at her without wanting to.

Arya kept her eyes fixed firmly on the ground as the interment continued; her pale grey irises flickering constantly to the corners of her eyes as she felt Jaime’s gaze boring into her, and when he finally looked away from her towards Cersei, he found his twin watching him with hard green eyes, as intently as he had been watching the girl from the North that he should have saved.

Then suddenly, the crypt was empty, and he was standing in the darkness with Arya, who was glaring at him from the other side of Ramsay’s sarcophagus.

His abstraction alarmed him.

_Did I really just fail to notice the departure of every person here?_

Arya, however, gave him no time to consider the question.

‘Don’t talk to my son,’ she snapped at him.

Jaime stared at her.

‘He was talking to me!’ he protested.

‘ _Stay away from him_ ,’ Arya growled.

‘Stay _away_ from him?’ Jaime chuckled, ‘I doubt I could be anything but a _spectacular_ influence on him, judging by what I’ve seen so far.’

‘And what _have_ you seen _so far_?’ she spat.

_You. You. Nothing but you._

‘Get any of my letters?’ he quipped instead.

‘You wrote me letters, did you?’ Arya asked; as though she didn’t care a fuck if he had.

‘I did,’ Jaime told her in a similar tone, ‘though now that I’ve discovered your predilection for torturing children, I’m beginning to be sorry I bothered.’

She looked blankly at him. That made him angry.

‘That little boy, Arya,’ Jaime darkly insisted, ‘the one that was tied to your saddle when I arrived. The one that fell off your horse into the mud.’

‘Oh, him,’ Arya indifferently recalled, ‘he’s alive. His mother and I have discussed it at length. She understands that it was for the best –’

‘For the _best_?’

‘– though he’ll probably never use his right leg again. One of the hounds got hold of it and wouldn’t –

‘He’s a child, Arya!

‘I know he’s a child.’

She spoke that last sentence with a degree of tenderness and soft-hearted shock that made him want to stop, but he plunged on anyway; uncaring of her feelings, and knowing that he would hate himself for it later.

‘What did he do to deserve what you did to him?’ Jaime demanded.

‘Nothing at all,’ Arya nonchalantly replied.

‘Apparently ‘nothing’ wasn’t enough to stop you slinging him over your saddle like a side of beef,’ Jaime plunged on.

‘It was the best place for him,’ Arya shrugged.

‘And what gave _you_ the right to judge?’ Jaime insisted.

‘Fuck you,’ Arya spat.

‘I know our lives are shaped by the people we live with,’ Jaime coldly laughed, ‘but gods, if I had known that you were going to be so devoted to Ramsay that you’d even go as far as torturing people for him –’

‘Shut up.’

‘– it almost makes me feel better about shoving Bran from that tower. If you’re crippling children yourself, then you’re in no position to judge me, are you?’

She struck him hard across the face; her palm making a loud, cracking noise in the darkness as it connected with his cheek. Her face was red as blood, and she was breathing heavily; as though making a concerted effort to stop herself from attacking him further; and his blood was beginning to sear and boil just like it had in the old days; only guilt was making it boil harder; made him think what he didn’t believe and say what he didn’t mean, to _her_ , of all people, to the one person that he….

And he remembered some of the letters that he had written her; the ones that were full of hate and hurt and lies; the ones that he had written to provoke her into writing back, and that he had imagined her shattering over, like glass, as she read every poisonous word without writing back.

He remembered some of the others that he had written to her, and in a way, he was glad that she had never received them.

Arya was taking several deep breaths, then stepping away from him and putting her hands behind her back.

‘Ramsay had a terrible memory for faces,’ she calmly said, ‘he had forgotten the boy’s existence within hours.’ 

‘Leaving the child to live out the rest of his days as a broken, traumatised cripple?’ Jaime mocked.

‘Leaving him alive,’ Arya murmured.

Something changed, then: something in her voice and face; as if anger and vulnerability had suddenly become the same thing; as though iron had been born with silk at its heart. And he saw her as she had been before she came here. He saw her as she was: a young woman pretending in order to survive; pretending and hurting because of him; but at her core, remaining unchanged. Guilt flooded him anew: guilt at what he had done, and guilt at what he had assumed; guilt at how he claimed to know everything, when in fact he knew nothing at all, when his one true talent was seeing the worst in people, even if it didn’t exist.

Arya was looking at him with something like fear; fear that grew as she watched him watch her, and she was stripped even though she was clothed, and deep within him, he felt his own walls crumbling to dust.

‘Arya –’

‘Don’t go near my son again,’ she told him, and left him with the stones and the dead.


	11. Chapter 11

**From Lord Varys, Master of Whisperers, at King’s Landing, to King Joffrey Baratheon, at the Dreadfort.**

Your Grace

While Lord Roose’s ‘setting aside’ the Lady Walda in favour of his good-daughter the Lady Arya would certainly be practical in terms of Lord Roose’s further binding his last living heir to him, Your Grace should consider to whom such a bond would be most beneficial: to Lord Roose, or to the realm.

Your Grace should consider that the plot with which Lord Roose proved himself to be most loyal to Your Grace was also, by its very nature, a revelation of that lord’s characteristic inconsistency and lust for power. His Wardenship of the North, and his consequent revival of ancient practices repugnant to the laws of Westeros, have also proved Lord Roose’s hunger for power to be infinitely greater than his talent at maintaining it. I have consulted with Lord Baelish, who has assured me that Northern expenditure now accounts for almost one quarter of the realm’s; a sum that has tripled since the days of the traitor Ned Stark. Lord Baelish further advises me that such reckless dispensing of funds in the North may, in the long term, result in all of Westeros’ being obliged to enter a period of austerity in which feasting, hunting and celebrations of any sort may have to be temporarily suspended in order to save the realm from bankruptcy. Your Grace should also consider the possibility that Your Grace’s lord uncle Tyrion may not long continue to put funds at our disposal if we continue to hand them over to a man so inept at managing them; a possibility that would put us firmly in the debt (and at the mercy) of the Iron Bank of Braavos; an institution that will not hesitate to fund the various causes of Your Grace’s enemies, merely in the name of getting their gold back.

The careful weighing of these facts by Your Grace, together with the blessing of Your Grace’s reign by the gods, will no doubt guide Your Grace in deciding whether or not the maintenance of Northern loyalty, the preservation of Westerosi financial stability, or the custody and education of the Lord Lucion, the future Lord of Winterfell, should be left in the hands of a man of such dubious loyalty and talent for command; a state-of-affairs which would be the inevitable consequence of a marriage between the Lord Roose and his good-daughter, the Lady Arya.

Your Grace may, of course, simply exercise Your Grace’s royal prerogative and consent to a match on the condition that the Lord Lucion be fostered in the South until he comes of age. This solution does not, however, consider the possibility of a tragic accident’s befalling either the boy, or his aunt the Lady Sansa before she produces children; in which case the Lady Arya, as the last Stark and therefore the last individual capable of ensuring the good behaviour of Stark loyalists and Northern secessionists, would be left once more in Bolton hands and under Bolton control. A Southern match for the lady would, however, keep her and her son firmly under Your Grace’s control, and would, along with Your Grace’s magnanimous influence, prevent some of the mother’s restless and indecorous spirit from passing to the son before he becomes Lord of Winterfell; a position of immense influence in the maintenance of Northern loyalty.

I join with all of Westeros in praying for Your Grace’s speedy recovery, and remain Your Grace’s obedient servant

Varys


	12. Chapter 12

‘My lord!’ the servant shouted, ‘they’ve found her!’

Jaime left his horse standing awkwardly in the middle of the training yard and rushed down to the forecourt; his footsteps joining with those of the countless others who were heading in the same direction.

The day before yesterday, Joffrey, still stricken with grief, had given Lord Roose permission to kill Lady Walda and marry Arya as soon as the mourning rites were over. _Yesterday_ , Joffrey had changed his mind; gleefully informing the latter young lady that she was once again a ward of the Crown and would be forced to marry a Southern lord of the King’s own choosing. And _today_ , it had been discovered that Arya and her son were not in their beds, and had run off during the night without attracting the attention of a single guard or watchman.

Joffrey had screamed his head off at the injustice of it and had slumped back into bed, exhausted; search parties had been deployed across all lands surrounding the Dreadfort; and Jaime had prayed as he had never prayed before: that she wouldn’t be caught; that she’d slip through their lines; that she’d get to White Harbour, and then the Free Cities, and live there, happy, with her son. Even though her chances would have been far greater had she chosen to run alone. Even though taking a five-year-old child with her could serve no purpose other than getting caught.

_She should have thought of that before taking the risk. She should have come to me._

_Lannister. Would_ you _come to you?_

Even so, he had prayed for her. He had gone to the sept, lit a candle, bent his knees and prayed. He had bribed a servant to inform him the moment the search party found her. And he had hoped, with a desperation so sleepless it ached, that the bribe would prove unnecessary and that she would at last be free.

Sleep had eluded Jaime entirely since the day of the interment. Even now, he could feel it calling to him; and even now, it wouldn’t come. All that came to him was her face; her face as they had stood together in the crypt; as he had spoken evil to her; as he had bastardised himself and what he had felt; as he had bastardised her.

What the fuck had possessed him to compare her to Ramsay? To compare her to _himself?_ To even _mention_ her brother; the intruding little shit whose face had somehow –  in the years that she had grown from girl to woman – faded and vanished for both of them; obliterated by the poison of trust. And then… in the darkness of the years afterwards…for him, Brandon Stark had faded to little more than a memory. A drop in the ocean compared to what he had done later.

Jaime entered the forecourt and perceived Lucion on the far side: grey as ash and being helped down from a horse by his septa. His leg was broken, and tears were leaking from his eyes as he struggled to bite back groans of pain. Arya had dismounted, and was trying to go to him, but was abruptly yanked by the ends of her chains into the centre of a group of Bastard’s Boys, who seemed to take great pleasure in laughing themselves hoarse at her increasingly frantic attempts to get away from them.

The harder she fought, the closer they moved, like vultures converging on a fallen wolf: shoving her from man to man; tripping her up with her tangled chains; and taking turns at seeing who could grope her arse the quickest. And Jaime’s feet were beginning to move, and his hand to move rapidly to his sword; and Lucion, realising that his mother was in danger, was starting to scream death threats and to cry out for help from anyone who would listen. And the Bastard’s Boys were laughing at him; imitating his cries and threatening to break his other leg if he didn’t shut up; and Arya was lunging at the man nearest to her and kneeing him in the groin in a final, desperate attempt to get to her son; and the remaining men were pulling on her chains like boys playing at tug-of-war; shouting to each other and laughing uproariously as the momentum sent her sprawling to the ground with barely enough strength to resist as one of their number stepped up to her and began to grind the heel of his boot into her face.

Jaime could feel the world turning red around him; a rush of crimson and scarlet and black. His blood was blinding him, then bringing him back; bringing the world back, clearer and ghastlier. Lucion was being bundled away from the scene and screaming his heart out; Arya was scratching, biting and weakening in the mud as she was beaten, held down, fondled and humiliated; and all of it was done out in the open, in broad daylight, as though hurting her were a thing so normal as to be almost banal.

The sound of the first man dying was better than sex.

Jaime ripped his sword from the man’s stomach and let his blood sing to him as the rest attacked; as one of them lost a leg, as another lost a head, as another fell to his knees with a bloody mess where his cock used to be; and it didn’t matter how many there were, or how strong or weak their weapons were; he was taking two, three, four of them at once, and colouring all of them red, and in his mind they all had the same face – his own – just as it had been five years ago when he had watched and done nothing.

His sword was dripping blood and the scene was dripping people; people who were fading away into the corners of his vision with only their backs and their fleeing, screaming footsteps; and he was kneeling in the mud next to Arya with the blood fury still in him and saying something to her; something he couldn’t hear as he grasped her shoulders and tried to pull her into a sitting position. She groaned in pain.

The sound of her voice sent his bloodlust tearing out of him. His humanity rushed in to fill the void, and he loosened his grip on her shoulders, which he now noticed was firm enough to bruise her skin. Arya’s fingers, however, remained tightly clutching at his forearms, and she allowed herself to be pulled slowly upwards until she was facing him.

Jaime felt his fingers brush away the mud that caked her face and dab tenderly at the skin beneath her eyes, which were hooded and opening and bloodshot and desperate. She looked at him; her grey eyes searching his. Then very slowly, she leaned towards him and rested her head on his shoulder. It was a small gesture, like a child’s, and his heart shattered as he realised that the only reason she wasn’t screaming at him to leave her be and not to touch her was that she had no one else. She was alone – alone enough to cling to the person that he had been, and to ignore who he was, even if it was only for a few seconds.

‘Help us,’ Arya half-murmured, half-sobbed against his Kingsguard whites.

He was shocked by how light her body felt against his; as though she were made of nothing but bone; as though a single touch would crush her. But then, she had always been small. Even that day in the boat, he had felt her ribs pressing hard against his stomach through the fabric of her shift. Even as her hands had tangled in his hair. Even as her lips had softly brushed his. Awakening him. Terrifying him.

A shadow appeared across the place where they sat. Jaime looked up into the dark. And he realised that his arms were wound tightly around Arya’s shoulders and that her own were clutched around his waist, and that Cersei was looking down at him in disapproval; her green eyes flashing as she surveyed the corpses; her beautiful mouth curling into a sneer.

‘Bring her inside,’ Cersei said, ‘before you make a bigger fool of yourself.’


	13. Chapter 13

Cersei remained dimly aware that her son was still speaking to her. She could hear the sound of his voice emanating from the pile of blankets and pillows that had been his sickbed since the Bastard of Bolton’s murder. She could hear the sound intensifying from a shout to a screech as Joffrey realised her abstraction. But she couldn’t pull back to him; couldn’t come away from where her mind was taking her, because twenty seconds ago, Joffrey had remarked, ‘I think I’ll marry the little Stark bitch to Uncle Jaime,’ and a warhammer had seemed to swing from nowhere and strike her in the chest. And her breath had been crushed from her lungs like blood from a wound, and memory had filled her heart and mind like poison; _one_ memory that seemed far more familiar than it should have been, as though she had been foreseeing it all her life.

It was the memory of Jaime’s face at the interment; his face among the stones and the dead; his eyes fixed intently on the Stark girl; his eyes calling her preposterous grey wolf ones up to his like a siren song; not as if he wanted to take her for a paramour or a whore, but as if he wanted to take her in his arms and hold her while she wept. There had been a gentleness in his expression rendered all the more terrible by the thing that had accompanied it: a dark sorrow that had clung to him like a silent form of torture, and a deep guilt (though she couldn’t imagine what for) that had seemed to crush him where he stood. It had given him an air of self-pity that had made her want to hit him till he bled, and now, as she remembered it, she realised that what she had seen in her brother that day had not been pity, or compassion, or infatuation, or even lust, but love; the worst kind of love; love as it was in the songs; so pure, so passionate and so utterly hopeless that no amount of fucking could ever truly consummate it.

Jaime was in love with her. He was in love with that dirty, doe-eyed, foul-mouthed little animal, and probably had been for years; and Cersei hadn’t seen it; had _refused_ to see it in – oh gods, in _everything, in all of it, in every day, in every -_  

…in the way that melancholy had suddenly and without warning enveloped her brother and taken him away from her; in the way that circles had appeared under his eyes and silence had taken the place of his speech; in the way that he had come to her bed for the past five years: rarely, and even then as if he didn’t need her at all, only the comfort of her flesh.

Had he been thinking of… _her_ during those times? Had he been imagining that scrawny, uncouth _child_ in her place?

 _I am a lioness,_ Cersei proudly thought, _no one can take away what is already mine._

Joffrey’s lips were still moving, and his face growing redder and redder, and Cersei fought the unladylike urge to drive her fist into the wall as she searched herself for every sign, every possibility, every _thing_ that she had not seen; every _thing_ that might have told her earlier. And as the sodden cloth began to slip off Joffrey’s forehead and his fingers to fist in the sheets, she remembered a time – only moments after she had lost Myrcella – when the rabble had tried to tear her and Joffrey to shreds, and half the city had descended into a state of anarchy, and Jaime, instead of staying at the Red Keep, _with her_ , had risked his own life to save that little _animal_ from the mob; a girl of one or two-and-ten that he didn’t even know.

He had brought Arya Stark back to the Keep clutched in his arms like some breakable thing: snapping at everyone who tried to take the girl off his hands; going with her to the infirmary and staying with her when it hadn’t been necessary; and enquiring for days afterwards – in an avuncular fashion that Cersei had found funny at the time – how the girl did, and whether or not she had bad dreams.

‘She killed a man, Cersei,’ Jaime had gravely answered when she had asked him why.

‘What of it?’ Cersei had replied.

Her brother had looked at her, then, with something like sadness on his face.

‘The first time changes you,’ he had replied.

And Cersei had imagined that this was one of those things – those male, warrior, blood things – that she treasured in him, but that she could never fully understand; and she had never thought of the incident again.

Until today. Until today when he had cut down ten men to save _her_ from something so simple as a beating, and then _held_ her afterwards, as though she were some weak, whimpering little child who needed the support of an adult to keep breathing.

She should have known, then. She should have allowed herself to know, then. But he had never killed for any other woman before. Any other woman but her, Cersei. And that was something that she could not allow; something that she could not admit, even now.

 _I am a lioness,_ she thought, _no one can take away what is already mine_.

Of course, in certain ways, her brother’s behaviour made perfect sense. Nothing makes a woman more eager to fall into bed with a man than his saving her from a crowd of raving commoners and pretending to give a fuck about her afterwards. She had had no idea that Jaime was capable of liking them so young either, but then she had never imagined him to be capable of loving another person: apart from herself, of course.

Had he already fucked the girl once before? It might make things more difficult if he had.

Then suddenly, she wanted to laugh, and she berated herself for even considering the question.

 _I am a lioness_ , she thought, _nobody can take away what is already mine._

‘I cannot think the match a good idea,’ Cersei said; biting back everything that she could not say to her son.

‘ _Why_ can you not?’ Joffrey snapped; as though he didn’t care a fuck either way.

‘It’s what he wants,’ Cersei said; pretending to give a carefully-considered reply.

Joffrey was not convinced.

‘ _So?_ ’ he growled, ‘who _cares_ if it’s what he wants? It isn’t what _she_ wants. That’s all that matters. I can imagine no worse fate for the little bitch. Apart from the one she’s already had, of course.’

Cersei cocked an eyebrow at her son.

‘I had no idea you thought so badly of your Uncle Jaime,’ she observed; an iron knot forming in her stomach.

‘He defies me,’ Joffrey snarled; ‘he’s always forgetting that I’m the King. _Always_. He’s worse than Uncle Tyrion ever was.’

‘So why not marry the girl to Uncle Tyrion?’

‘Because Uncle Jaime is worse than Uncle Tyrion, ARE YOU FUCKING DEAF?’

The iron knot in Cersei’s stomach and the bone whiteness of her knuckles were fast transforming into the desire to walk across the room and hit her son around the face. But whatever that little Tyrell whore chose to call herself, Cersei Lannister was a queen, and would always behave as such; even if the king himself had no such scruples.

‘You should think carefully about losing the Lord Commander of your Kingsguard simply to prove that your word is law,’ Cersei continued; as if Joffrey had not shouted at all.

‘My word _is_ law!’ Joffrey snapped.

‘Whatever impertinences your Uncle Jaime has committed, he is a fine warrior,’ Cersei persisted, ‘there are not many others who can replace him.’

‘I may appoint one of the Kettlebacks,’ Joffrey replied; beginning to tremble with fever, ‘it might be pleasant to have somebody who _smiles,_ for a change.’


	14. Chapter 14

‘No!’ Arya shouted; trying to slam the door in Jaime’s face.

Jaime stuck his foot into the gap and pushed his way into the room. She rounded on him.

‘Get out!’ she screeched.

‘Just _listen_!!!’ he shouted back.

‘NO!!!’ Arya bellowed; seizing hold of his lapels and shoving him towards the door again.

‘ _LISTEN TO ME!!!_ ’Jaime roared at her.

‘Get out before I call a guard!’ Arya screamed.

That made Jaime smirk, in spite of himself.

‘Go on,’ he told her, ‘call for him.’

There was silence. Arya’s beautiful beautiful agony of a face transformed in front of him; marked by a conflicting desire to scream and to escape as she released him, shoved him roughly away from her and stalked back to her bed, which was strewn with the contents of a half-unpacked wardrobe.

She was unsteady on her feet; as though she had had too much to drink. She used one hand to take sips of an almost-empty bottle of milk of the poppy, and the other to unceremoniously throw dresses, shifts, shoes and headdresses back into the cupboard unfolded. As she worked, she remained silent and ignored Jaime so completely that for a time, he thought she had forgotten his presence.

He looked at her.

The bruises on her face were beginning to heal, but still coloured her skin black and blue; her hair was a tangled mass of darkness that swayed with every movement of her body; and at her wrists, unconcealed by her rolled-up sleeves, were the red ring scars from the chains that she still seemed to wear.

‘No amount of staring will make me marry you,’ Arya suddenly and calmly said; her voice like that of a woman three times her age, ‘not you, not anyone. So go back to your son and tell him that your plan didn’t work.’

Her horribly-justified distrust pierced him like a dagger to the throat.

‘You think I _planned_ this?’ Jaime demanded.

‘You sure as hell wouldn’t be obeying the little shit if you hadn’t,’ Arya replied; refusing to meet his eyes as she continued to toss clothing back into the wardrobe; as he stood rooted to the spot, flabbergasted, and dying: dying from the truth.

Arya seemed to find that delightful.

‘ _Oh_ ,’ she drawled; her expression spiteful and triumphant, ‘have I hurt the poor Kingslayer’s feelings?’

Hearing the word on her lips was somehow worse than anything else she could have said, because she was the only one who knew; the only one that he had ever told about Aerys and his kingdom of ashes; the only one that he had trusted enough to tell; and for a moment he wondered where his smart mouth had disappeared to as each barbed, individual syllable pushed him further into the darkness of guilt.

‘You’ve never called me Kingslayer before,’ he murmured; cursing at how soft his fucking voice sounded, and when she did not reply, he allowed himself to believe that she hadn’t heard him at all.

There was complete silence in the room, broken only by the rustle of clothing as Arya flung each individual article away from her. And suddenly, as if for the first time, Jaime realised what she was doing.

His smart mouth returned in an instant.

‘Why are you repacking your wardrobe?’ Jaime scoffed, ‘trying to identify changes in fashion?’

‘Fuck off,’ Arya spat; the venom in her voice telling him that she had been aware of his presence all this time.

‘Counting your dresses?’ Jaime continued, ‘cataloguing how much velvet you have left?’

‘Only if velvet’s good for strangling you to death,’ she hissed in reply.

‘Running away again?’ he proposed; as though nothing could be duller.

Arya’s head snapped upwards, her eyes widened in horror and the colour drained so quickly from her face that Jaime quickly took an involuntary step towards her; fearing that she might faint.

‘Who told you that?’ she demanded; hysteria colouring her voice.

He stared at her.

‘Nobody told me –’

‘Did Ramsay tell you that?’

‘What?’

‘Where is he?’

And before he could ask her what the fuck she was talking about, she was striding frantically across the room and ripping open every set of curtains that she could find; as though she expected to find Ramsay hiding behind it.

Jaime felt his heart shatter in his chest.

‘Arya, he isn’t –’

‘Where is he?’

‘Arya –’

‘WHERE IS HE?’

And she began to tear the curtains off their railings and throw herself from window to window like a caged animal crying ‘where is he? Where is he? WHERE IS HE?’ and Jaime was striding across the room towards her; afraid that she might hurt herself, and - 

‘Where is he?’ Arya shouted; beginning to throw the windows open.

‘Arya –’

‘Where is he?’

‘ARYA!’

‘WHERE IS HE?’

Jaime seized both her arms and held her fast, so that she faced him.

‘ _He’s dead, Arya_. We killed him.’

She froze, and stared at him for a moment; as though unaware of his identity.

Then the return of her memory was almost visible; a storm in her grey eyes as she realised where she was, when she was and who he was. Her expression hardened immediately.

‘Take your hands off me,’ Arya softly said.

Jaime hesitated.

‘ _Take your hands off me_ ,’ she growled.

He released her. She tottered away across the room, reclaimed her bottle of milk of the poppy and drank deeply. When she finished, and looked at him again, she blinked; as though surprised he was still there.

‘I would marry… _anyone_ …if it meant that I didn’t have to marry you,’ she said, softly, but clearly, ‘now please go.’

He wanted to respond with similar courtesy; with softness; with restraint. Instead, he found himself shouting at her as he would have done years ago, in the course of one of their stupid arguments about dragons or direwolves.

‘And what happens when you marry someone else?’ Jaime bellowed, ‘when Joffrey marries you off to some plump little lord who’ll force you to walk around in a dress all day and never let you fight, or ride? How should you like all that needlework, Lady Bolton? Does the prospect please you?’

‘Better than being chained to scum like you for the rest of my life,’ Arya growled.

‘You’ll be chained to far worse if you run, and you’re caught,’ Jaime scoffed, ‘besides, you’ve already tried it once – wasn’t much of a success, was it?’

‘Get out!’ Arya shouted.

‘What will you do when Lucion comes back with a broken neck instead of a broken leg?’

‘That will never happen; I’ll protect him!’

‘Not by running, you won’t!’

‘He’ll be far safer on the run than he will be with _you_ as a stepfather!’

‘And why is that? The only obstinate child I want to throw out of a window right now is you!’

‘Is that your idea of a joke?’

‘Growing up a fugitive is no bloody way to raise a child!’

‘Don’t pretend that you give a fuck about my son!’

‘I don’t give a fuck about your son. But I know that you do.’

She stared at him for a moment; as though his face were a lock on a prison door.

She recovered quickly.

‘I’m a widow now,’ Arya stubbornly declared, ‘I only have to listen to what _I_ have to say, and I say that I will never marry again!’

‘You’ll never marry _again???_ ’ Jaime repeated in disbelief, ‘are you _dreaming_ , child? Do you think you have a _choice_? Do you think you have an _option_ what happens to you? Your son is the only male heir to the North! If he dies, if Sansa dies –’

‘Shut up!’ she bellowed.

‘– then it’s _you_!’ Jaime insisted, ‘do you think they’ll ever allow you out of their sight again? Do you think they’ll let you go? If you run, they will hunt you down to the ends of the earth and drag you back here in chains to be wed to whichever obsequious bastard Joffrey chooses!’

‘It will never happen; things will be different this time!’

‘You don’t believe that yourself!’

‘I _know_ that myself!’

‘Will you stop being so bloody stubborn and let me help you?’

‘Is that what you call it? Is that what you’ll call it during the bedding, when you’re holding me down and sticking your cock in me while I close my eyes and beg you to stop?’

‘You really believe me capable of that?’

‘Can you blame me?’

‘Arya, please –’

‘I don’t know why you’re even bothering with _marriage_ , anyway. You’re bigger than me, you’re stronger, and on top of everything you’re the fucking Kingslayer; if you want to fuck me; do it now, get it over with, stop talking about my son and _get out of my fucking room_!’

‘Stop _talking_ this way!’

‘What way? Do you think I’m blind? Do you think I haven’t seen the way you look at me with your stupid Lannister eyes; as though I were some poor shattered princess that needs some knight with a stupid name to ride in at the gate and save her? Do you think I haven’t seen you fucking me with your stupid eyes?’

‘Do you think I haven’t seen you fucking me with yours?’

That shut her up with impressive rapidity, and for a moment Jaime was rather pleased with himself as her face, neck, hands and every inch of exposed skin turned a bright shade of red. Then she started to cry.

She made a valiant effort to strangle her own sobs and disregard her streaming eyes, and she once again uncorked her bottle of milk of the poppy and drank until there was nothing left; ignoring Jaime completely he approached and stood before her with his hands and arms twitching; not daring to touch her; dying to touch her.

And it hit him again. It killed him again. His own cowardice. His own lie.

_I did this. Me._

‘Arya –’ Jaime murmured.

‘Stay _away_ ,’ she choked; refusing to meet his eyes.

‘When I say marry me –’

‘I will _never_ marry you,’

‘I mean in name only.’

Arya’s eyes locked onto his at once; bloodshot and exhausted, but alert.

‘What do you mean?’ she demanded.

_She’s listening. Thank the gods, she’s listening, she’s listening –_

‘You don’t have to see me,’ Jaime declared in a rush, ‘you don’t have to fuck me. You don’t even have to live in the same house as me. Just marry me, take your son and go where you choose. They’ll let you, if you have a husband. Just go. Live. Be free.’

As he finished, she stared at him with undisguised astonishment; her mouth hanging open and her grey eyes large and brilliant. Her gaze made him profoundly uncomfortable: intent, penetrating and deeply suspicious; as though she were seeing something good that she did not dare acknowledge. He watched her fight with herself, and with everything that he had once condemned her to; with her love for her son, and with her knowledge that though Jaime was wrong about most things, he was right about the fact that they would never let her go.

She looked away from him.

‘I’d…I’d be under your protection.’

‘Don’t think of it that way.’

‘But it is that way.’

She still didn’t look at him. The fingers of her right hand were rubbing at her left wrist, and for one dizzying, mad and utterly irrational moment, he wanted to reach his hand out to hers and brush the scarred flesh with his lips, as if that would somehow make everything better.

‘Just think of it,’ Jaime drawled, in a confident voice that made him cringe, ‘you would have all the benefits of being married to a son of Tywin Lannister without ever having to see him. Most women would kill just for the chance.’

The embers in Arya’s eyes became raging fires as she glared at him, and he cursed himself for the second time that morning.

‘What if I ask to be sent to the Free Cities?’ she coldly asked.

He almost doubled up at the thought. His body’s reaction was enough to make him sick. Everything in him revolted against it; made his blood pound harder and his heart maim quicker and bile rise in his throat so that he wanted to gag on it.

 _What did you think, you imbecilic little cunt?_ he told himself, _that she would actually want to stay with you?_

And yet, when Ramsay’s dagger had pierced his back and sent the poison into his veins, she had saved him. She hadn’t let him die. And she certainly wasn’t the type to go out of her way to save an enemy.

He owed her everything and anything that she wanted. If she wanted to be sent to the Free Cities –

‘I would let you go,’ he softly replied; trying to pour every inch of honesty that he had ever possessed into those five syllables; into all of his body; into all of his eyes as he looked at her; so that she would see and feel and remember the person that he had been; the person she had trusted; so that she would know, just by the sound of his voice, that he would never betray her again; that he would spend the rest of his life trying to atone for what he had done, even if he knew – now, today – that a thousand lifetimes would never be enough.

She was crying openly now. She wasn’t even fighting her tears. He was close enough to her to see the sheen of tears change the colour of her skin; to feel her eyes rip his heart out; to taste her breath on his face. He remembered her earlier that week; her thin arms clutched about his neck and her head nestling childlike in the crook of his shoulder as she saw, as she remembered, what she had felt for him before and what she had once known: that with him, she would always be safe. He could see that in her now. And she could see it in him.

He was very close to her now. The heat of her body was intoxicating, even though he was not touching her, and Jaime rapidly shoved the thought away from him and moved towards the door. She deserved more from him than lust.

On the threshold, he paused.

‘Years ago,’ he said, ‘I betrayed you when I should have protected you. I abandoned you. I am responsible for everything that Ramsay has done to you.’

‘Yes,’ Arya snapped; her tongue returning in a flash; ‘you are.’

He closed his eyes as the pain of the truth shattered him once more. When he opened them again, she was still there.

‘I will not ask for your forgiveness,’ Jaime said, ‘I do not deserve it. But let me do this for you. I failed to help you before. Let me help you now.’

He looked at her for one moment more, then moved to go. The door was right in front of him. He put out a hand to open it.

‘Would it be in the betrothal agreement?’ Arya’s voice asked, ‘the part where you said you would let me go?’

Jaime turned slowly, disbelievingly, to face her. She was looking at him with the utmost concentration; as though trying to determine whether or not he was lying.

‘Would it?’ she insisted.

‘Yes,’ Jaime replied.

‘Would I get to keep my son?’ Arya asked, ‘you wouldn’t send him off to foster somewhere and forget about him? You’d provide for him if I died? You wouldn’t send him back here?’

‘No,’ Jaime replied.

‘Would _that_ be in the betrothal agreement?’ Arya asked.

‘Yes,’ Jaime replied.

She said nothing else.

Jaime turned to leave.

‘I’ll leave you to consider –’

‘I don’t need to consider.’

Jaime’s heart sank.

‘If it will not be you, it will be someone else,’ Arya said, ‘I would far rather it were you.’

He looked at her.

She was hugging herself. Her eyes were clouding over. And though she was alive, she looked dead.

‘Now get out,’ she said.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some readers may feel that it is not in Arya’s character to acquiesce so quickly. My response: NOT EVEN SORRY!!


	15. Chapter 15

**Fragments (all unsent)**

 

**From the Lady Arya Stark, at the Dreadfort, to Ser Jaime Lannister, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, at King’s Landing**

Jaime

Fuck you. Fuck you and your unfeeling, condescending, childish little letter and fuck the unfeeling, condescending, childish little apology you sent afterwards. All this time, and I’ve never written back to you. Not once. _Why won’t you leave me alone?_ Haven’t you got the fucking message yet?

I don’t want your letters. I don’t want the paper you use to write them. I don’t want your words. I don’t want the ink you use to shape them.

I don’t want to know that you’re _thinking_ about the Red Wedding. I don’t want to know that you’re _thinking_ about _me_. What fucking use is _any_ of that to me?

I don’t want your letters. I don’t want your words. I don’t want _you_.

I want

 

* * *

 

**From the Lady Arya Stark, at the Dreadfort, to Ser Jaime Lannister, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, at King’s Landing**

Jaime

I think I may have loved you once.  That day in the boat I definitely did, even though I was five-and-ten and stupid. Not knowing what you would do. What you wouldn’t.

I have scarring on my wrists and ankles from the chains. When the chains first came off, and I saw the scars, they made me think of that one time when you showed me the scar you got fighting the Smiling Knight, so I smiled. I could see Ramsay watching me. He thought I had become him.

In the beginning, I used to dream that you would come for me. It’s so unlike me, to dream like that; so strange for me, to dream of being saved by someone else. But the strangest thing of all is that before _that_ moment – the moment when they dragged me out into the yard to be chained into the carriage – I hadn’t expected help from you, or wanted it. I told myself that I would run away, or fight, or kill them all in their sleep. Then they yanked me out into the sunlight and held me down, and I realised that if my future husband had half the strength of the weakest of them, I would not be able to fight back.

You were there. I couldn’t see you, but I knew that you were there. I felt you. And for a split second, I wasn’t afraid, because I knew that you would butcher alive anybody who treated me like that.

Then they dragged me away and chained me up, and you stood there and did nothing.

I could feel the realisation doing something to a place beneath my skin; in the way that castles fall when miners have been digging during a siege and fucking up their walls. If I were like other women, I might say it was the feeling of my heart tearing in my chest, but it was worse than that. It was the feeling of me, breaking.

Jaime. What did I do to make you hate me so much?

* * *

 

**[End of Part 1]**


	16. Chapter 16

**Part 2: Casterly Rock**

 

‘It won’t work,’ Arya had told him.

‘If you don’t trust me, will you at least trust Tyrion?’ Jaime had snapped in reply, ‘it was his idea.’

Arya had frowned stubbornly at him, and had refused to answer, though the fear of having her clothes torn off by a crowd of drunken strangers had continued to mark her bruised face like a scar. And yet on the wedding night at Casterly Rock, when Joffrey had had too much to drink and had passed out at the high table, Jaime had seen her smile weakly at Tyrion, and the sight had given him hope, even as Tyrion bowed to her from his seat and slapped the unconscious king’s shoulder in a gesture of camaraderie.

‘I will not allow the bedding of my lady wife,’ Jaime had stiffly announced when the time had come, ‘she is much too frail for such things.’

There had been grumbling, of course, from the drunker guests, and whispers of conspiracy from the soberer ones, but one look at the bruises on Arya’s face and another at the unwavering resolve on Jaime’s had made all thoughts of argument evaporate; so that while Jaime had been dragged out of the hall by a crowd of shrieking females, a group of guards had escorted Arya from it to make sure that she reached their designated chambers unmolested.

Jaime’s heart was a dead weight in his chest as he pulled off his doublet and shirt, plonked them unceremoniously onto the recliner where he would sleep, and cast about for the apparently non-existent sleeping shift that was meant to have been left out for him.

Tonight, he and Arya would sleep in the same room, for the sake of appearances. Tomorrow, she and her son would leave for the Free Cities, and he would never see her again.

When he thought about it, he could find no words for the inside of himself. It was a kind of numbness so deep it hurt; a boiling, all-encompassing sadness far worse than anything he had experienced in the five years since he had betrayed her. The sea air was like daggers on his bare skin, daggers that hovered and daggers that cut, only to suddenly and inexplicably become softer and caressing; as though Arya had walked into the room silent as a wraith to brush her lips against the back of his neck; her tiny nose nestling into his hair, her arms winding around his waist and her hands resting open-palmed on his stomach; her body pressed against his back and her breath hot on his skin as her mouth moved down his spine.

He could feel her standing behind him.

Jaime jerked around with a surge of blood in his veins.

She stood silent in the doorway with half her face buried into the frame.

For a split second, she looked afraid; her grey eyes fixing on his naked torso as though it were a jar of wildfire. Her eyes burned upwards to his, every colour of their look an agony.

Then she straightened up and shouted at him.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ she loudly demanded.

‘I am getting dressed, young lady,’ Jaime replied in as nonchalant a manner as he could muster.

‘You look like you’re getting _un_ dressed,’ she accused; cocking an eyebrow at him.

‘My servant hasn’t laid out clothes,’ he scoffed, ‘he probably imagined I wouldn’t need any, the fool.’

‘You need a _servant_ to fetch you your clothes?’ Arya scoffed back as she entered the room.

‘We weren’t allowed servants in the Kingsguard,’ Jaime observed; turning to face her; ‘so I rather like the idea of having –’

‘Come near me and I’ll chop your cock off!’ Arya seethed; drawing two daggers and holding them protectively in front of her.

Jaime stared.

‘Why in seven hells would I try anything when we’ve agreed not to fuck anyway?’

‘Just stay away!’

Jaime was silent for a moment; his mind churning, then reeling as he considered the reasons why she might wear a pair of daggers to bed.

 _She doesn’t trust me,_ he thought.

 _Do you blame her?_ he thought again.

Jaime took three steps away from her. She did not lower her daggers.

‘There’s a screen there for you to change behind,’ he said quietly, ‘take the bed. I won’t bother you.’

Arya stared suspiciously at him for a moment, before sheathing her daggers and beginning to cross the room.

‘You’d better not,’ she snapped.

 

* * *

 

Arya moved behind the screen, and breathed. With both her hands she smoothed perspiration from her forehead and hair and breathed steadily to slow the beating of her heart, which was thundering within her like a storm.

‘It’s just the shock,’ she murmured to herself as her heart continued its forceful pounding, ‘it’s just the shock, that’s all; just the preparing for a fight because I thought –’

‘What?’ Jaime unceremoniously shouted from somewhere in the room.

‘I didn’t say anything!’ Arya shouted back, and began to unlace her gown with trembling fingers.

For the past week, she had been unable to think of anything but the first time Ramsay had… ‘bedded’… her. That night had come to her constantly, unbidden, and in flashes of fear and horror: the smell of her own blood, the glint of steel on her throat, and Ramsay’s skin cold and reptilian against hers as he broke her; fucking her as hard and as cruelly as though she were a well-used whore instead of a scrawny little girl with her virtue still clinging to her thighs, and her teeth drawing blood from her own lips to stop herself from crying.

She had told herself, each time one of these memories seized her, that Jaime would not do the same thing; that he was too ashamed, too afraid, and too fucking desperate for forgiveness to do so much as look at her inappropriately. But as the soldiers had escorted her from the hall and into the winding corridors of Casterly Rock, she had been gripped by a sudden, paralytic, uncontrollable fear that it had all been a lie; that she had been duped; that he would never let her go; that when they arrived at Jaime’s chambers the guards would seize hold of her and pin her down and laugh and chant along as her new master fucked her and hurt her and laughed at her for being so fucking stupid.

And her steps had begun to falter as she had walked between the guards; she had begun to look frantically over both of her shoulders, left and right, to see if there were any possible means of escape; ‘are you quite well, my lady?’ the captain of the guard had asked kindly; and _stop being stupid, stop being afraid,_ she had growled to herself, _you’ve got two daggers with you, and you’re much better at using them now than you were five years ago, don’t stop, don’t cry, think of Lucion, you have done this for Lucion, don’t cry, DON’T_

The guards had left her alone at the door. She had stood there, trembling, and only her deepest sense of self-control had prevented her from bolting. She had gripped hold of both of her daggers, _you’re not afraid, you’re not, you’re **not,**_ and with her heart in her throat and her teeth clenching together, she had opened the door and her fear had disappeared so quickly that she had almost choked on it.

Jaime had been standing with his back to her, his skin bare to the candlelight, looking out towards the sea, as though transfixed. And somehow he had seemed larger than the sea; larger even than the room in which they stood…

The light, dim as it was, had seemed to slide across his skin with a kind of hunger; its glow caressing every muscle and every scar; the shadows rippling across his golden skin like a stone across a pool; as if the sound of his voice when he had proposed their ‘arrangement’ to her had come suddenly alive in his flesh with how kind he had sounded; how sincere in his guilt; how much like the person that she had loved, once.

_The person who knew what Ramsay was and gave me to him anyway._

The realisation had provoked a wild, dizzying rush of blood to her head that had only made her feel fainter and sicker when Jaime had turned around to face her, and as she had sniped at him and been sniped at in return, her hatred of him had grown deep enough to be almost tangible, making perspiration wake up across her body and her heart beat so quickly that she feared she might swallow it.

 _Tomorrow, we’ll be gone_ , she thought to herself, buckling her belt on over her sleeping shift, _hating someone is less complicated when you’re thousands of miles away from them._

* * *

 

She dreamed. It was surprising to her, even in her sleep, because she never dreamed. You couldn’t dream if you never slept.

She dreamed _about_ _that day_. It made her scream, in pain and horror, in her sleep and out of it, when she came _tearing_ out of it; her daggers swiping madly at the memory, the evil, the thin air that made her choke; that made her want to reverse the blades in her hands and end herself, end herself, end herself, if it would only stop thought, if it would only stop memory, if it would only stop –

She dropped one of the daggers, and searched, and couldn’t find it _WHERE IS IT_ she’d have to use just the one, to _take me away, take Ramsay away, free Lucion, make him free, free him_ , she gripped it to use it, to make Lucion free, to take herself away, to take Ramsay away; and then he was there, Jaime; knocking the blade from her hand and grasping the back of her neck with his hands and saying something to her; a wall of sound that she could only half-hear; something about it being just a dream, Arya.

She rasped something incomprehensible back at him, because it couldn’t be true, she couldn’t dream because she didn’t sleep, not ever, not since she had been a little girl. And she could still feel the cold of the dream on her skin; the same cold that had struck her through to the bone in the second when she had entered the room, _on that day_ , and seen Lucion, his trousers at his knees as he lay face-down on the bed, and Ramsay standing behind him, his fingers at his breeches, unlacing himself; _she was so cold, cold on the inside, cold inside herself, freezing to death when she had all the fires and all the furs she wanted._

Something crushed the cold’s fingers, then; warm as a wolf pelt on nights the wine froze in the glasses, and she realised that it was Jaime’s skin covering her as he held her to his chest like a little girl; the heat of him melting through her shift and into her body.

‘It’s…it’s warm,’ she shivered; her lips trembling so violently that she could barely get the words out, and he didn’t reply at all, but sat frozen like a statue against her, as though he had acted impulsively and now regretted it; and she was falling, falling back into the past to the day of the riots when she had run and run and hidden and been trapped, and he had saved her and she had saved him, and she had refused to be carried like a child, even though her legs were barely strong enough to support her weight, and Jaime had dumped her into the dust, chivalrous as ever, and called her a stubborn little idiot. But when she had tried to stand on her own, her treacherous knees had given way beneath her again and again until she was half-crying from her own weakness; from this place; from this time; from what had almost happened to her; from the thrill and the horror of taking life; until Jaime had snorted in derision, picked her up again, and had made sure to remind her of her own stupidity for every step he took towards the Red Keep; his grip on her strong, but gentle; like a link being forged in a chain. She had leaned against him and had let him speak his piece, too tired and too weak to fight back, until his warmth had seemed to envelop her like a blanket on a cold night, and the sound of his voice had been drowned out by the fury of his heartbeat; which had thundered ferociously in his chest like a battle cry, but had somehow made her feel calm.

For one moment, she was there again, safe, and a child; wanting to bury herself in his skin and sleep there. Then the adult world and adult things returned to crush her, as they always did. Her broken body returned; her broken soul, if she still had one; the scars on her ankles and wrists, from the chains, and from the memories; two memories at the same time.

The day that she had left King’s Landing.

_In the boat, Jaime’s mouth on hers._

The knowledge, as they dragged her out into the forecourt, that he was there, that he would save her.

_In the boat, her hands tangling in Jaime’s hair as he softly kissed her neck._

The realisation that he wasn’t stopping the men who were hurting her, that he wasn’t coming to help her, that she wanted him to help her, that she needed him to, that he wasn’t coming _why isn’t he coming, why is he leaving me, why is he letting me go_

_The two minutes, the lifetime, in which she had been kissed softly, touched softly, caressed softly; Jaime’s fingers light as feathers as they stroked her skin and covered her hands with his._

_The two minutes, the lifetime, in which she had been loved._

‘I... _hate_ you,’ she sobbed into Jaime’s chest; a sob that she had meant to be a growl, and she flinched automatically as she waited for him to pull away, and strike her for her impudence, and take what was his by every law of Westeros.

But his fingers stroked her back as though she were made of porcelain, until the tautness in her muscles unknotted itself and faded out of her, and she felt Jaime’s lips brush the top of her head and whisper, ‘go to sleep.’

‘I don’t sleep.’

‘Try.’

She didn’t sleep.

She told him.

She told him everything, the words spilling out of her like blood; her husband, her son, her husband standing over her son, and the horror, the horror, the pain, the _fear_. Half of her expected him to mock her; the other half to beat her; no half at all for him to listen in silence; his one hand comfortingly stroking her hair, the other her back, and she let him, she allowed him to, she wanted him to, because if she didn’t have someone holding her up in that moment, she would fall into madness and never return, and she needed her sanity, her mind, her strength, for her son, her tomorrow, her freedom.

‘Ramsay is dead,’ Jaime whispered; his lips brushing her ear; ‘he can only hurt you now if you allow him to.’

Arya nodded silently against him, though she wanted to tell him that he was wrong; that sorrow followed you everywhere, regardless of where you hid away. But he was so warm, warm and safe, and she hadn’t felt warm or safe in years. She felt him shift slightly on the bed so that his back touched the wall. His arms around her did not move. She could feel the sound of the sea outside, and within herself, a heat, a constancy, that she had not felt for a very long time. Sleep began to claim her again as she tried to think about it, and the words she heard as thought faded from her mind might have been dream, or reality.

‘I will miss you...'


	17. Chapter 17

A ray of moonlight shone between the beams of the cabin wall and illuminated Lucion’s face. Arya sighed loudly, then sucked in her breath, not wanting to wake him. If he awoke, he would probably start fighting again, and she was far too tired to endure that now.

Lucion had spent most of the morning after the wedding shouting about how he didn’t want to go to Braavos. He had refused to pack his trunk; he had refused to break his fast; he had spent the entire ride down to the harbour trying to spur his horse away; he had tried to jump overboard before the ship had been out to sea. Arya had fought with him through every defiance and every disobedience, her discourse interspersed with copious consumption of milk of the poppy, and now, as she lay on the preposterous feather bed that Jaime had been stupid enough to think she would appreciate, she groaned internally at the nauseating spinning of her own head and wondered if she had drunk a bit too much.

‘ _He let me go_ ,’ she murmured; the words sounding strange and new on her tongue, ‘ _he said that he would let me go…and he did_.’

A part of her hadn’t expected him to.  A part of her had feared, just as much as she had feared the wedding night, that this was all a trick, that Ramsay was part of it somehow, that the moment that Casterly Rock disappeared from view and left nothing but an expanse of freezing blue sea before her – that the moment she thought she was free – her dead husband would appear beside her new one, laughing at her and dragging her below deck to be chained up and enslaved once more while her son watched.

But Jaime hadn’t done anything like that…he had simply wished her well, and let her go, just as he had promised to.

Trying to determine how she felt about that was too confusing to bother with.

 _He betrayed me_ , Arya fumed, _he left me. He could have saved me from five years of hell and he didn’t. Letting me go doesn’t change that._

She looked at Lucion again. He snorted in his sleep, his pale face fixed in a frown, not wanting to leave Westeros, even when he slept. And it hurt her to have to hurt him; to make him suffer such an overwhelming change when change was the last thing he wanted, because hurting him was what Ramsay had done.

Hurting him was what she had killed Ramsay for.

Arya stared at Lucion, and felt her heart swell and ache with the fact that she loved him more than anything else in the world. In his sleep, his black curls were a wild wave of night against his pillow and his hands were fisted in the sheets, strong and certain and Northern.

_He looks so much like Jon._

She didn’t even know if her brother was alive. Some reports said killed, some said vanished, but all she knew was that she could no longer…

Everything about Lucion reminded her of Jon; his smile, his frown, his seriousness…except that she and Jon had almost never argued, and with Lucion she did little else.

Earlier that day, they had had a bitter argument on deck as the ship had moved away from the coast.

_‘I don’t want to go!’_

_‘Life’s not fair, get used to it!’_

_‘Don’t treat me like a child!’_

_‘You are a child!’_

_‘I am NOT! I’m five and a HALF!’_

_‘You may not understand now, but someday you –’_

_‘I’ll never understand; I WON’T, I’ll stop myself!’_

_‘What in seven hells do you have against Braavos?’_

_‘BRAAVOS ISN’T WESTEROS! What will we do there? We’ll know nobody and there’ll only be a lot of greasy foreign ugly people who can’t talk to us or spar with us or go hunting with us – what will we do there?’_

_‘Nothing, just LIVE!’_

_‘LIVING’S BORING!’_

_‘Lucion –’_

_‘Why do you want to leave?’_

_‘Leaving is best for us.’_

_‘It’s about Ser Rickard, isn’t it?’_

_‘I have told you a thousand times that that is not his name.’_

_‘Is he in deguise?’_

_‘DISguise!’_

_‘Fine, is he in_ DISguise _?’_

_‘No.’_

_‘Is he hiding from someone bad, so people can’t know who he is?’_

_‘He isn’t in bloody disguise!’_

_‘In other words, you don’t_ know _if he’s in deguise.’_

_‘You are on thin ice, young man.’_

_‘Why? I just want to know why I can’t call him Ser Rickard.’_

_‘Because he isn’t Ser Rickard! He is Jaime of the House Lannister, your stepfather, whom I only married so we could –’_

_‘If you’re married then why are we leaving?’_

_‘So we can be free!’_

_‘Can’t we be free and stay here?’_

_‘If we stay here, we will never be free.’_

_‘Why? Father’s dead.’_

_‘You are too young to understand.’_

_‘Are you scared of him? If we stay with Ser Rickard, will he be like Father?’_

_‘Do you think he will?’_

_‘No.’_

_‘Why not?’_

_‘I like him.’_

Arya knew little of children or of how they were meant to act or speak, but there were times when she felt that Lucion was far more intelligent than a child his age was meant to be, even though he still had an abundance of childish instincts about people and the state of the world. So his comment about Jaime had made her pause a little – even feel a little – before their argument had resumed with greater fervour than before; and she lay in bed now, watching her son sleep and beginning to remember the rare parts of that day that she had not spent fighting with him.

That morning, when she had woken up, it had been with her eyelids heavy with rest, and she had realised that she must have slept. Her entire body had felt soft and warm, and she had felt a smile spread from her lips, all the way down to her toes, at the thought of staying asleep; of sleeping for the first time in years, sleeping…

Then she had opened her eyes to find her head nestled in the curve of Jaime Lannister’s neck.

His scent had made her head spin – with revulsion, she told herself. His one hand had been clasping her back and the other her waist; his arms wrapped around her in a way that had seemed strong and fragile at the same time; like armour that didn’t weigh anything. She was pressed flush against him with nothing but her shift separating her from his stupid bare skin; her body seeming to deliberately seek the intoxicating heat of his; her breasts pressed against his chest and her cunt grinding hard against his cock; as though he were her lover rather than her enemy.

And suddenly the call of sleep had been stronger than ever, and he had shifted in his sleep and pulled her closer to him, and for one, stupid moment of weakness no doubt brought on by some inconvenient feminine part of her responding to the moment when he had said, ‘I will not ask for your forgiveness because I do not deserve it,’ she had wanted to heed the call, and fall back into him, and sleep.

The madness had passed quickly.

She had yanked herself out of his arms, furious with herself, and had almost fallen out of bed in her eagerness to put as much space between her and him as was humanly possible. He hadn’t woken up; turning on his side in his sleep and snorting in an undignified way that she would have smiled at had it not been –

And she had turned on her heel and left the room to find her son, closing the door behind her as quietly as she could.

She hadn’t seen Jaime again till the moment before she had boarded the ship. While they were still at Casterly Rock, she hadn’t allowed her son a glimpse of the required moment alone in which to commit some form of mischief, and she had ridden directly beside him on the way down to Lannisport; ready to protect him with her life if this all turned out to be a trick; ready to cut him off in the highly-likely event of his trying to ride away. Five years old or not, he was her son, and no child of hers would be easily catchable once they took it into their heads to escape on horseback. So she hadn’t seen Jaime again. Not until they got to the harbour.

At the harbour of Lannisport, in front of the ship, Jaime had stood facing her, wordless, and she had found her hand straying to her dagger.

_This is it, this is the moment, it’s a trick, I knew it was a trick -_

He had looked at her with sadness, as though guessing her thoughts, before bowing to her, formally.

‘Goodbye, my lady.’

Her eyes had searched his face suspiciously, and had found no trace of a lie. There had been no anticipation in him, no exaggerated nonchalance, no attempt at avoiding her eyes; nothing that suggested he was waiting for the right moment to reveal his deception and laugh himself hoarse at her stupidity. He had simply looked…resolved. Resolved, and terribly sad.

The fist around her heart had unclenched slightly, and her breath had come a little easier, _he’s going to let me go, he’s going to do it, he’s isn’t going to make me stay, it isn’t a trick, seven gods, it isn’t a trick –_

 _Don’t be such a fool,_ she had thought, _remember you aren’t out to sea yet._

She had nodded curtly at him, and had walked off towards the ship without looking at his face again.

 _He kept his word_ , she thought to herself; Lucion’s snores filling the cabin.

‘He let me go,’ she murmured to herself, and the words tasted like light.

 

* * *

 

‘Quieter night than usual, isn’t it?’ Tyrion remarked, pouring out wine, ‘or does it merely seem that way because Lord Lucion is no longer here?’

Jaime sipped at his wine, saying nothing.

‘Will he really throw himself into the sea, I wonder?’ Tyrion continued, ‘or will he simply be happy to flaunt his discontent?’

‘He’s leaving everything he knows behind,’ Jaime murmured, ‘if you were his age, you might have done the same thing.’

Tyrion, meaning well, continued to prattle about how he, at Lucion’s age, would have been delighted to be anywhere but at Casterly Rock, but the words faded and gradually died within the sea of Jaime’s own thoughts, so that he was only marginally aware of it when his brother rose, clasped his shoulder and left him alone with the bottle of wine.

Jaime braced himself, and waited for the dark.

It struck him so hard that he almost choked on it; its fire more excruciating and more unbearable than ever before; the pain of it burning so deep and so bright within him that he bent over in his seat with the dagger buried deep inside him; the boiling guilt and grief it was made of far worse than Valyrian steel.

He reached for the bottle with one hand. It rolled off the table, and smashed.

On one hand, he saw her freedom; her chance to live: _she’s free,_ he thought, in a desperate attempt to calm himself, _at last, she is free; at least I could do that much for her, even though it will never be enough –_

On the other hand, he saw nothing but his own damnation; the full realisation, at last, of what he had done to her by not saving her; the sight, the story, the _horror_ that she had told him last night as she had sat clasped in his arms like a child, her words and her choked sobs running into each other and stabbing him again and again and again; his mind, his resolve, his arrogance not trying to stop the onslaught because it was her anguish that had needed and deserved to be relieved, not his; and he sat up in his seat and made no further attempts to diminish the pain; letting it rage through him like fire through metal: what he had done to her; how he had ruined her. And a realisation struck him, a certainty in the centre of the dark, that while what he had felt for her before seeing her again had turned him into a broken shell of his former self; what he felt for her now was going to kill him. He knew now what he had done to the life of the one person he loved more than himself; knew it without having to guess at it. He had seen the scars on her wrists and the bruises on her face; seen the parts of her that were broken and the parts that couldn’t be fixed; known, with her heart beating wildly against his, pumping horror and fear and bile, precisely what he had damned her to; for Cersei, for his own stubbornness, for his own stupidity.

Nobody with the slightest trace of compassion or humanity could carry that knowledge and not die from it.

The idea did not frighten him. If he died, then it was as it should be.

He had hardly seen Arya at all that day, apart from the morning, when he had woken up with his neck bent at a strange angle; and with _her_ , burrowed deep in his arms and sleeping like the dead; her fragile limbs so entangled with his that it had been impossible to tell where she ended and where he began, and it had felt, gods help him, gods damn him, like peace. Then she had pulled herself out of his arms as though they were made of wildfire, and he had rolled onto his side and pretended to be asleep; trying not to think or feel.

She had breakfasted alone with her son after that, and had also ridden at the boy’s side on the way to the harbour, allegedly to prevent him from running off with his horse. Jaime hadn’t much understood that. How far could a five-year-old go on a horse? Still, he had not seen her again until they had reached the ship, and he had faced her, and his tongue had fled from him.

She had looked at him like a woman preparing for a fight; her eyes narrowed, her lips pressed together, her hands on her daggers and her legs planted steadily apart; ready to fight, ready to run.

 _She thinks it’s a trick_ , he had thought.

The realisation had torn the light from him, even though he couldn’t blame her at all.

 _Don’t go_ , he had wanted to say, even though he knew that it was selfish, and heartless, and stupid under the circumstances, _stay here, let me help you._

‘Goodbye, my lady,’ he had said instead.

_Selfish. Stupid. Mad._

She had looked at him with – was it relief? Disdain? What was it?

Then she had nodded curtly in response, and had walked off towards the ship without a backward glance. He had mounted up and ridden away immediately. He had never been one to watch ships disappear into the distance.

He had returned to Casterly Rock with his escort, and he had spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening in the training yard, punishing every squire and knight he could get his hands on; knowing and fearing what would come for him the moment he was alone. The dark.

The first rays of the sun were beginning to glance across his chamber walls; the darkness seeping out of the world and burning into him. Arya’s sobs thundered in his ears and her scars flashed across his vision. Every beating, every humiliation, every rape she had suffered seemed to parade before him in awful clarity and demand to be looked at and endured. Every second was like flesh torn from his bones and hands trailing filth across his soul; an emptiness that hurt, and made him want to writhe and scream, but he did not avert his eyes. He had earned no such respite.

‘Will you let me go?’ a voice testily remarked.

Jaime turned slowly in his seat.

She was standing in the doorway.

He breathed slowly.

She glared at him.

She was wearing her outdoor clothes, the same ones in which she had left Casterly Rock yesterday morning. Her hair was very long and very tangled, like it had known the winds of the sea. The bruises on her face were still there. Her eyes still destroyed him with a look.

She folded her arms, and looked at him.

‘Will you let me go?’ she repeated impatiently.

‘What the fuck are you _doing_ here?’ he replied, with a degree of nonchalance that he was rather proud of.

‘The Lord of Winterfell does not care for Braavos,’ Arya drawled, ‘he denounced it – before he had even seen it. Will you let me go?’

‘What’s the point of promising to let you go if you insist on coming back?’ Jaime demanded, ‘you make the task a very thankless one.’

‘I want your word,’ Arya insisted, stubborn as a mule.

‘It’s in the betrothal agreement.’

‘I still want your word.’

‘Life has taught you nothing if you take it.’

She broke eye contact at that; her gaze flickering to the floor in discomfort, then reluctantly up to his face again. She said nothing, but continued to look intently at him, as though she wanted something from him, but couldn’t tell him what it was. His entire being seemed to groan and seethe beneath the weight of her gaze, her loss, her return; beneath the horror of that night and the horror of that day and the selfish, selfish, mad, wrong, ecstatic ecstasy of the sight of her; of the knowledge that she had left, and had chosen to come back.

‘I want your word,’ Arya repeated.

‘I swear it by the old gods and the new,’ he said.


	18. Chapter 18

‘You know she might be mad?’ Tyrion suggested, giddy from too much wine at dinner.

Jaime, seated opposite him, glanced at him with numb disapproval.

‘She isn’t.’

Tyrion snorted.

‘How do you know?’

Jaime shrugged.

‘I just do.’

Tyrion leaned forward in his chair; a clear indication that he was about to be unpleasantly honest.

‘This living with her,’ Tyrion gravely told him, ‘is not good for you.’

‘It isn’t good for her either,’ Jaime softly replied; thinking of the long days that Arya spent alone on the beach, drinking milk of the poppy with one hand and practicing archery with the other; hating every minute of being here.

‘She’s making you worse,’ Tyrion drunkenly persisted.

‘That is a small price to pay; considering what she has suffered at my hands,’ Jaime replied; knowing that his brother spoke the truth; fervently wishing that his brother would shut up.

No such luck.

‘I understand why you married her –’ Tyrion tentatively began.

‘Good,’ Jaime drawled; hoping his tone would close the subject.

‘– but you married her believing that you would never see her again,’ Tyrion told him, ‘ _this_ arrangement is absurd! The atmosphere in this place is ruining my digestion.’

‘What would you have me do?’ Jaime snapped; flinging himself out of his chair and resisting the urge to throw it against the wall; ‘send her off to one of the summer castles? Cut her off completely? Isolate her even more than she is already? I can put up with any kind of _atmosphere_ if it means that I know she’s safe now; that I’m bloody… _doing_ something this time –’

He began to pace; wanting to stop; not able to; hating the feeling of Tyrion’s eyes on him and the look of pity that he knew they contained.

‘I can’t help her if she’s far away,’ Jaime seethed.

‘How in seven hells do you plan to help her?’ Tyrion asked; sounding confidently sceptical, ‘ _why_ must you help her; when there might be others more suitable to the task?’

‘ _Because I am the reason that she stands in need of help_ ,’ Jaime hissed at him; still pacing.

‘Or perhaps deep down,’ Tyrion continued, ‘you hope that living in such close proximity to her will make her see the change in you and forgive you?’

‘She is a young girl who has been to the edge of the seventh hell because of me!’ Jaime shouted; slamming his hands down on the table and storming at his drunken brother; ‘I married her to _help_ her, and that is _all_.’

‘So you have no hopes?’ Tyrion insolently quipped.

‘What? _No_!’ Jaime declared.

‘Of forgiveness or otherwise?’ Tyrion enquired.

‘ _No_!’ Jaime shouted.

‘And if she _did_ forgive you?’

‘We both know that that would never happen, brother.’

‘But if it did?’

‘Then I would know for sure that she is mad.’

Tyrion narrowed his eyes and grinned wickedly; his irises made darker by drunkenness.

‘Are you telling me,’ he said, ‘that since the day you married her, you’ve never even _thought_ about –’

‘I haven’t bloody _thought_ about anything,’ Jaime snapped, ‘and nor will I.’

‘So if she walked into this room right now, professed her undying love and asked you to fuck her on the table top, you’d say no?’

‘ _How could I do otherwise???_ ’

Jaime’s voice cracked slightly as he spoke the words, and he fought to make the anger swell within him so that anything else he felt would not show in his face. How could his brother be thinking about _fucking_ , of all things? True, he was drunk, but under the circumstances that was no fucking excuse.

‘WHAT?’ Jaime stormed; the dumbstruck look on Tyrion’s face only serving to make him angrier; ‘how would it be _just_ if I laid so much as a finger on her? She is a young and vulnerable girl under my protection. What would it make me if I fucked her; even with her consent? I’d be nothing but a cunt who took advantage.’

And before he could take pride in Tyrion’s lack of a clever reply; the doors swung open, and Arya stormed into the room; her face a mask of fury and hot rage.

‘We need to talk RIGHT NOW!’ she bellowed; slamming her bow down onto the table and rounding on Jaime.

‘Goodbye!’ Tyrion declared, and bolted for the door with a speed that Jaime would never have believed possible.

The doors creaked ominously shut, and Arya turned rapidly to Jaime; taking evident pains not to look him in the eye or to stand too close to him.

‘What I choose to pour down my own throat,’ she seethed, ‘ _is no concern of yours_.’

‘If you’re doing it in my house,’ Jaime replied, ‘it is every concern of mine.’

‘It’s not your house. It’s Tyrion’s.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Do I?’

Jaime ran his fingers through his hair, breathed deeply and tried to be reasonable.

‘Drinking twenty bottles of milk of the poppy a day is not good for you!’ he exclaimed.

‘I don’t _care_!’ Arya shouted at him, ‘what gives you the fucking right to _forbid the maester_ from giving me any? To go behind my back and –’

‘Behind your _back_? Jaime repeated in disbelief.

‘Yes, _behind my back_!!!’ Arya bellowed; ‘you _didn’t tell me_!’

‘I’m telling you now!’ Jaime pointed out.

‘That’s not the same thing!’ Arya shouted.

Jaime took a step back from her and folded his arms.

‘You are being ridiculous, my lady. I was merely concerned.’

‘If you were concerned, why didn’t you ask _me_?’

‘Because I knew that your answer would give me a bloody headache!’

‘Aw. Shall I fetch you your tear cup?’

Jaime snorted in laughter, and cursed himself immediately; certain that she would interpret his reaction as a sign of weakness. And sure enough –

‘Milk of the poppy _calms_ me –’ she began.

‘Milk of the poppy is killing you,’ Jaime gravely replied; the words feeling poisonous in his mouth.

Some part of the venom must have reached Arya too, for she hesitated momentarily and looked awkwardly at his boots; before trying, and failing, to make herself look him in the eye again. Her cheeks coloured, and she said nothing.

He both hated and loved these small, visible battles with herself. They helped him delude himself that she still felt something for him besides hatred; that she was still capable of smiling at him, even though she was no longer capable of sleeping.

‘My lady,’ Jaime said, very quietly, ‘do you fear that sleeping without milk of the poppy will give you nightmares?’

Arya’s gaze snapped up to his immediately.

‘I’m not scared of any fucking _nightmares_ ,’ she mocked.

‘Not in externals, perhaps,’ Jaime said; beginning to lose patience; ‘but inside, you’re terrified, and we both know it.’

She took two steps forward and hit him.

It was the first time that he had mentioned the wedding night; that _either_ of them had mentioned the wedding night; and from the look on Arya’s face, it was clear that she had wanted to keep it that way. Anger flashed through her grey eyes like a winter storm, and her face was the colour of blood, and it was almost impossible to believe that the fragile girl with bones of glass who had wept and cried in Jaime’s arms from the horror of a dream was the same person as this; this firestorm of anger and silence and war whose left hand twitched like a dying man from the desire to strike him again.

‘How _dare_ you presume to know what frightens me?’ Arya snarled.

‘My interest is in keeping you alive,’ Jaime snapped, ‘not in stroking your ego!’

‘Don’t pretend that you give a fuck about _keeping me alive_ ,’ she growled; with a quietness that turned his spine to ice; ‘yes, you married me, but you did it _to make yourself feel better_ , and my life or death doesn’t change that. If I died right now, you’d still be able to tell yourself that at least you did _something_ to save the poor, helpless little _girl_. Well I don’t need _you_ to help _dull the pain_. I have milk of the poppy for that. _It_ helped me. _It_ saved me. And now you want to take away the one thing – the _one thing_ –’

A deep sadness rose in her eyes, and fled from them just as quickly. Her words were a bed of thorns that trapped him in their embrace.

‘You,’ Arya said, ‘don’t get to _take_ from me anymore.’

And just as quickly, she brought her lips savagely up to his and kissed him.

The shock alone was enough to make him freeze dead as she slipped her tongue between his lips and started to use it; lapping at his tongue and trying to draw it into her mouth as he seized promptly hold of her shoulders and yanked her away from him; praying to all the gods that she wouldn’t see the sudden, crippling, maddening desire in his face.

‘Arya, what the _fuck_ –’

She cut him off with another kiss; her lips like iron as they grazed his; her tongue soft as it flicked against his bottom lip and unmanned him. He opened his mouth with a groan and yielded himself and kissed her back, and seven gods, he was dying; dying of it and dying of her and dying for her; his hands still on her shoulders as her lips claimed his; his hands still trying to push her away, because this wasn’t right; she couldn’t want this, she must want something else, she wanted –

‘Arya,’ he murmured; trying not to gasp aloud as her fingers tangled in his hair and her mouth moved to his neck, ‘Arya – don’t –’

‘Make me stop,’ she murmured against his skin; her lips brushing the curve of his jaw; ‘just tell me to stop, and I will.’

‘Stop,’ he whispered; arching his neck beneath her mouth; ‘stop…gods… _stop_ –’

‘Why?’ Arya asked; flashing him a smile that did not reach her eyes as her hand brushed the front of his trousers, and found him hard; ‘don’t you want me?’

‘ _No_ ,’ Jaime told her.

‘Liar,’ she told him, and kissed him again, and everything in him told him to stop, because this wasn’t right, this couldn’t be right, but time and worlds were blending together, and trapping him in their embrace, and he was in the boat again; feeling the hesitancy of her lips on his and then their boldness as his mouth opened beneath hers.

He was in the boat again, as if the past five years had never happened.

He kissed her with a passion that he had not experienced in a thousand years; cradling her head between his hands as though she were made of glass and speaking to her with every touch of their lips; telling her what she already knew; what she had always known, and he felt her soften in his arms; her tiny hands brushing strands of hair away from his forehead as she sighed contentedly into his mouth and kissed him deeply but so, so softly; until his suspicions and his voices were nothing but faded ghosts in his memory; faded beneath the heat of her body and the earnest beauty of her mouth as he felt her smile against him and kiss him like she had forgiven him. His thoughts were a riot of colour and joy and regret and confusion, and he could feel every inch of her filling him up like wine; she had the most glorious scent, like a fire on a cold night, and he felt her laugh softly against him as he kissed the nape of her neck and buried himself there; his nose grazing her skin and leaving goosebumps in its wake.

Then all at once, her body grew hard again. Her fingers crooked in his hair like claws and her kisses became savage bites from some inhuman animal as she swooped down on his neck and left teeth marks where her lips had been.

Jaime sucked in his breath.

‘Jaime, please,’ Arya murmured; in a breathy voice that sounded utterly unlike her real one; ‘you and I are good together. We can help each other.’

Understanding began to tear through love, and dreams, and memory.

‘I can see what you want every time you look at me,’ she whispered, ‘let me help you; let me give you what you want –’

‘Arya, let go of me,’ Jaime said; feeling less in control by the second.

‘– all you need to do is return the favour,’ Arya purred; kissing his neck, ‘by giving me what _I_ want.’

‘Let GO OF ME!’ Jaime roared, and shoved her hard; and a small part of him screamed in terror as she stumbled rapidly backwards and almost fell to the floor.

She looked at him, and slowly straightened up. And she looked so small and vulnerable in that moment, he should not have – he shouldn’t have –

‘I did not mean to push you so hard,’ Jaime said, ‘I am sorry for it.’

She didn’t reply. She simply stood there; looking humiliated, confused, and on the verge of tears.

‘Would you really fuck me just to get your hands on some milk of the poppy?’ Jaime asked her; hoping that his wounded pride would not show in his voice.

Still, she did not reply; her expression beginning to turn inwards; her eyes beginning to burn with grief, and frustration, and the absence of the drug that could take them away; and Jaime felt bile rise in his throat as the horror of her life took on yet another blackened, smirched facet of ruined innocence in his guilt-stricken mind.

‘Did…Arya, did Ramsay make you – do things – to get milk of the poppy?’ Jaime stammered; every word its own death within him, and she was trembling now, and her frown was deepening, and he was torn between shouting at her till she wept and holding her _while_ she wept.

_My poor, innocent love; my love, my child –_

Arya’s eyes turned upwards to his, as though she had heard his thoughts.

‘I want my son,’ she muttered, and turned away from him so that he wouldn’t see her tears.


	19. Chapter 19

Lucion opened the saddlebag that the boy had given him and started at the sight of the bottle of milk of the poppy inside.

‘Who are you?’ Lucion demanded.

When he looked up again, he found himself alone; the small, wordless boy having apparently exercised some magical power to vanish into thin air; and, with a mechanical determination that rather surprised him, Lucion began to walk in the direction of the beach, where he knew he would find his mother.

Since dawn, Casterly Rock had found itself in the unusual and precarious position of there being no more milk of the poppy in its maester’s stores– something to do with the trade routes with Highgarden.

‘Trade routes, indeed,’ Lucion had heard one of the servants say, ‘my Tym says he saw Ser Jaime ordering the bottles to be thrown into the sea.’

Whether or not Ser Rickard – or Ser Jaime, as everyone else insisted on calling him – had indeed been responsible for the somewhat nonsensical act of having an entire stockpile of milk of the poppy thrown into the sea (Lucion did not believe it – no person who had commanded armies would be capable of doing anything so stupid), all Lucion really cared about was the fact that Mother was very sick today, sweating and snapping and trembling as though her bones were made from glaciers. The contents of the saddlebag would make her better, even if he had no idea how they came to be in his possession.

It briefly occurred to him, as he passed through the castle gates, that perhaps he ought to hug the wall, or at least keep his head down so that nobody would recognise him. He had given his guards the slip hours ago, and the last thing he wanted now was to be picked up and dragged back to his lessons. But if there was one thing that Lucion had no time for, it was causing mischief in the shadows. Where was the fun in being naughty if you didn’t eventually get caught?

There was a ferocious wind on the road down to the beach below the Rock. White horses were dancing on the waves, and foaming and crashing together as they rose and fell on the dark water. Lucion watched them as he walked, and wished that he could dive into them headfirst.  It was so _hot_ here. And what was worse, everybody was always crapping on about how _cold_ it was; lighting fires in every room and walking around in cloaks and woollen tunics. The septon’s study, in which he took his lessons for six hours every day, was _stifling_ , both from the heat and from the boredom. How could he be expected to learn anything when sweat was dripping down his nose all the time and splotching up his books? But then Lucion had never been much interested in learning anything scholarly except High Valyrian. It was ridiculously easy compared to the rest.

Lucion skipped nimbly off the road at the sound of hooves behind him, and turned around to look at the person riding. Maybe it would be a knight in armour. One saw far more of them down here than in the North.

It was a knight without armour, and Lucion paused as Ser Rickard, dressed in crimson leather, pulled his horse neatly up a few feet away.

Lucion smiled at him; though he wasn’t entirely sure why. All he knew was that his mother did it every time she saw him, so it must be a good thing to do.

‘Are you going to the beach, Ser Rickard?’ Lucion asked.

Ser Rickard’s face fell.

‘Lucion,’ he said, ‘how many bloody times do I have to tell you that that is not my name?’

‘Anything you say, stepfather,’ Lucion shrugged, ‘are you going to the beach?’

‘No,’ Ser Rickard indignantly declared.

‘Why are you on this road if you’re not going to the beach?’ Lucion asked.

‘I believe I have the right to ride where I like, little lord,’ Ser Rickard testily replied, ‘though I’m not sure that your lady mother has accorded you the same privilege.’

‘Oh, I always do what I like,’ Lucion declared, ‘though apparently I’m not allowed to.’

‘Does that include going to the beach?’ Ser Rickard asked.

‘Yes,’ Lucion replied.

Ser Rickard gave him a withered look, and glanced up and down the road at the soft, sandy green grass that lined it on either side. He wore a sword at his hip with a hilt of red and gold. Lucion stared at it with envy. When the stupid master of arms allowed him to use a real blade, he wanted a sword like that.

‘Where are your guards?’ Ser Rickard questioned; sounding cross.

‘They disappeared hours ago,’ Lucion shrugged.

‘You mean _you_ disappeared hours ago,’ Ser Rickard corrected.

‘They find it hard to keep up,’ Lucion complained.

Ser Rickard rolled his eyes.

‘Well, let me accompany you.’

‘I want to walk alone.’

‘It would greatly ease my mind to know that you are safe.’

‘ _I don’t need you to take care of me_!’

Ser Rickard smiled at that, while Lucion pouted in response.

‘You can ride next to me if you like,’ he mumbled.

‘What was that?’ Ser Rickard asked.

‘You can ride next to me if you like!’ Lucion exclaimed.

Ser Rickard looked confused.

‘Don’t you want a ride?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Lucion said.

‘A rarity among children,’ Ser Rickard observed, and Lucion snorted in response.

There was not much left of the road, and they walked down to the beach in silence; Lucion on foot, Ser Rickard on his horse. Lucion glanced at the knight every now and then, and found it easy to understand why Mother had married him. He was exceptionally tall, and his form could only be described as beautiful, though not in a way that made him look like a girl. With his golden hair, golden skin, vivid green eyes and commanding presence, he exuded nobility and grace. He was everything that a king should be, even though he wasn’t one. He found it harder to understand why Mother was always fighting with him, because ever since the wedding day, she had not fallen down a single flight of stairs or walked into a wall that she had somehow thought was a window.

Lucion and Ser Rickard reached the furthest end of the road. Mother was only just visible, standing upright and firing on the targets that she had stolen from the training yard on their first day back. She was a lone figure against the massive expanse of white sand and massive, menacing waves, but even from this distance, it was possible to see the tension in her; the sickness.

‘I will leave you now,’ Ser Rickard said.

‘You won’t come and greet Mother?’ Lucion asked.

‘No,’ Ser Rickon replied; wheeling his horse around; ‘don’t disturb her.’

 

* * *

 

He found Mother grimly facing down and firing upon the targets she had set up all over the beach. Every single one of them was peppered with arrows. Every single arrow was embarrassingly far away from the centre of the target.

Mother was drenched in sweat, and her lips trembled visibly. She was so absorbed in what she was doing – or failing to do – that she didn’t notice his approach at all.

‘Mother?’

She turned immediately, and her face whitened at the sight of him.

‘Wildling?’ she said, ‘what’s happened?’

‘Nothing,’ he replied.

‘Where are your guards?’ she demanded.

‘I lost them,’ he shrugged.

Her eyes flickered away from his, and he could see them scanning the landscape behind him for a horse.

‘You didn’t _walk_?’ Mother screeched, ‘your leg has only just healed, you shouldn’t be –’

‘Someone gave me something for you,’ Lucion interrupted, and he handed over the saddlebag.

A strange look crossed Mother’s face as she took the bag from him, and when she opened it, her eyes filled with tears.

‘Where did you get this?’ she hissed.

‘A boy gave it to me,’ Lucion told her.

‘Where?’

‘At the Rock.’

Mother’s eyes unfocused as she drew the bottle out of the saddlebag.

‘I told him to send only to me…’

She forgot about the rest of her sentence as she unplugged the bottle, threw her head back and drank half the bottle’s contents; the muscles in her throat pulsing as the nectar streamed down her throat. She sighed in satisfaction, and slipped to her haunches, before lying down on her back in the sand to drink the rest. Lucion watched the fragile whiteness of her closed eyelids gleam as their fluttering ceased and her breathing slowed; a long, contented breath slipping out through the gap between her lips as the bottle slipped, empty, from her fingers.

‘Come here, wildling,’ she murmured; reaching out her arms, and he tackled her even though she was lying down; making her groan, and laugh and hold him close to her.

Lucion nestled against her for a while, though it was impossible to remain that way for long. She was far too hot for comfort, and her skin was still drenched in sweat that clung to her like boiling water.

‘Mother,’ he said, ‘I think you’re sick.’

When she didn’t reply, he turned to her; intending to pull her ears to make her listen.

But she lay silent and fast asleep in the sand; with both her hands still holding on to him.

Slowly, so that he wouldn’t wake her up, Lucion eased himself out of her arms and sat up in the sand; sighing as the uncomfortable heat abated slightly and looking out towards the sea. The waves continued to rage against each other; a consistent, annoying reminder of how infernally hot he was. He considered going for a swim, then realised that he probably wouldn’t be allowed to, with the sea so rough.

No sooner had the thought occurred to him that he realised that the only person nearby who could tell him what to do was fast asleep.

A sudden screech and cry of gulls directed his attention to the cliffs beneath Casterly Rock. At their summit, two seagulls were fighting over a fish; struggling as their beaks attempted to hold onto their prey and to ward off their enemy at the same time. The fish slipped away from both of them, sailing smoothly down to the waves below, and both gulls tore downwards in vicious pursuit; riding the air like a ribbon of silk and piercing the surface of the water like arrows; diving down into the deep blue sea after their catch.

Lucion gazed wistfully at the cliffs, and wondered lazily how he could get up there.

When his gaze fell on Mother’s horse, he smiled.


	20. Chapter 20

The roar of the wind and waves was too heavy and too loud for Jaime’s shout of warning to have a hope of being heard. He watched Lucion, tiny and vulnerable against the sheer cliff face, step off the edge and plummet, like a stone, to the howling waves below.

The boy fell like a leaf through treacle; his arms flailing through the air like a doll’s. He hit the water with a sickening smack; the black waves claiming him; swallowing him. And Jaime vaulted off his horse and leapt off the cliff face after him, with only the dimmest recollection of how he had come to be there so quickly. The road, then the cliff.

 

* * *

 

The malaise struck her heart like a hammer. The hammer shattered, and became a freezing mist that permeated everything.

There was a hole at her side; a space around her.

She opened her eyes, and saw the sky.

She sat up – Arya – and looked out over the beach and the sea, and felt ice hardening over the surface of her skin. She screamed her son’s name. She screamed for him to answer her. He didn’t.

_He might be alright; he might be hiding; maybe he’s gone back to the Rock; maybe he’s…_

But the bottle lay empty in the sand, and it rested there like a corpse that she had made.

There was a flash of gold at the base of the cliffs that she glimpsed immediately despite the dark of the day.

The waves crashed around Jaime like jaws as he surfaced, and looked, and looked, and looked at the surface of the water to his left and right and behind him and in front of him, as though in search of something he had lost.

He shouted her son’s name. The waves tried to pull him under.

When he allowed them to take him, she ran into the sea.

 


	21. Chapter 21

If Arya was praying, she was doing it in her head; her hands still clutching her son’s right arm; her hands still helping Jaime drag him out of the water, even though the two of them were on the sand now, and Jaime was pressing down hard on the boy’s chest; trying to bring his breath back.

‘Lucion, please,’ Jaime murmured.

Any other mother would have been hysterical, Jaime thought: crying and screaming and descending into a general state of uselessness. But Arya was covering Jaime’s hands with hers, locking their fingers together and pressing down with him; her face blank and disciplined; hysteria reduced to a dull, frozen ache in her eyes that Jaime knew would slam into her later.

‘Lucion, please,’ Jaime repeated; pressing down harder as the little boy’s gaunt face, blue lips and fragile fragileness swam in and out of his vision.

And he wanted to scream at her: _where the fuck were you? What were you doing? WHAT WERE YOU DOING?_

‘Please,’ Arya whimpered; looking down at her son; her jaw set so tightly that it might have been chiselled in stone; ‘please, please, please…’

An empty bottle was lying three feet away from them in the sand. Its inside was streaked with white. And Jaime felt anger boil up in his chest and begin to sear at the corners of his being, and he slammed his hands down harder onto Lucion’s chest, and harder, and harder –  

‘Jaime, stop!’ he heard Arya shout in alarm; her hands trying to seize his.

But he shoved her away and didn’t stop; pounding into the boy’s chest as though he were made of straw, and Arya was pushing _him_ now; her fingers digging into his shoulders like claws, just like they had dug into his hair when she had tried fucking him just to get some hands on some _fucking_ milk of the poppy; the drug that had done _this_ –

‘You’re pressing too hard; you’re killing him!’ Arya was screaming at him.

‘ _He’s already dead_!’ Jaime spat at her; a silent _thanks to you_ hanging in the air between them like the red mist after a battle, and nothing could stop him now; he would make this little shit wake up, or tear him in half in the attempt; the boy felt pliable beneath Jaime’s hands, like putty, ‘ _STOP IT!_ ’ Arya was screaming, and his fists worked the boy’s chest like hammers, pounding again and again and again; Lucion felt breakable and tearable, like some animal sacrifice to his mother’s helplessness; and Jaime’s hands were fisting in Lucion’s shirt as a knife at his throat stopped him.

Arya grabbed a handful of Jaime’s hair and yanked his head upwards; the point of the dagger nestling against the spot that would make him bleed out in thirty seconds.

He wanted to stand up and snap her neck.

Then the boy coughed.

A little splatter of water, so small as to be almost inconsequential, bubbled up from his mouth and splashed onto his face.

He moaned.

Arya screamed.

Jaime sank backwards into the sand as her walls began to crumble to pieces, as he had known they would. Guilt struck her face like a whip as she seized hold of her son and held him to her: deep, mind-numbing, mind-horrifying guilt; familiar symptoms to Jaime, so familiar. She covered the boy’s face in kisses and berated him; calling him the greatest fool in the world and the most reckless child that ever breathed. Lucion said nothing; his eyes wide, staring and stupefied.

Arya looked at Jaime as she held onto her son. Their eyes met. And in that moment, though he hated himself for it later, he could find nothing within himself but anger.


	22. Chapter 22

The servant opened the door slowly.

‘She will not come, my lord,’ the man said.

And the anger that had not left Jaime’s heart or mind from the moment that Lucion had woken up seared suddenly and violently within him; and he stormed down to the infirmary, ripped Arya out of the chair beside her sleeping son’s bed, slung her roughly over his shoulder, and carried her kicking and screaming back to his solar.

By the time he dumped her unceremoniously onto the bed, the back of his neck was red with nail and teeth marks.

She leapt off the bed and flung herself ferociously at the door with an agility that astounded him despite his anger.

The door was locked.

Arya’s face bore all the proud, vicious beauty of a mother defending her son. Too bad she hadn’t thought to defend him earlier.

‘ _Unlock the door_ ,’ Arya seethed.

‘It only unlocks from the outside,’ Jaime replied.

‘UNLOCK THE DOOR!’ Arya screamed; flying at him with her daggers drawn.

‘No,’ Jaime nonchalantly answered; seizing the daggers blade-first and throwing them into the fireplace.

‘LET ME OUT!’ Arya bellowed.

‘You can scream at me, you can stab me, you can yell the roof down till you’re blue in the face,’ Jaime coldly told her, ‘you and I are not leaving this room until we’ve talked about this.’

‘About what?’ Arya demanded.

_I don’t believe this._

‘About your son who almost drowned when you were asleep right next to him!’ Jaime roared; the rage within him becoming uncontrollable as the girl proceeded to ‘if’ and ‘but’ as though he were being entirely unreasonable.

‘I did not _mean_ for it to happen!’ Arya stormed.

‘That must be a _great_ comfort to him!’ Jaime snapped.

‘It was an honest mistake!’

‘How did you get your hands on that fucking milk of the poppy?’

Her face hardened.

‘That is not your –’

Jaime shoved her hard into the wall; his hands gripping hard enough to bruise; his anger swelling violently enough to ignore how the colour fled from her cheeks and the fear made her freeze where she was.

‘Tell me you didn’t send for it yourself,’ he growled.

She glared defiantly up at him; her eyes a firestorm.

‘ _Tell_ me,’ he demanded.

She remained immobile.

‘Tell me,’ he said softly, in a tone that sounded oddly like pleading.

Arya was unimpressed.

‘You had no right to order the stores away from Casterly Rock,’ she petulantly remarked.

‘Is that all you care about?’ Jaime spat; making her shrink harder against the wall; ‘my _ordering stores away from Casterly Rock_?’

Her eyes were terrible as she spoke.

‘I can’t take care of my son when I’m – when I’m –’

‘ _Take care of your son_? Is that how you define today’s fuck-up?’

‘I can’t –’

‘HE ALMOST DROWNED, Arya, which part of that do you not understand?’

‘I – I can’t –’

‘If you had been awake instead of in the middle of a drug binge, he wouldn’t have gotten as far as the road; let alone the fucking cliff!’

‘What were you doing so close by anyway?’ she demanded accusingly.

‘I was taking a ride,’ he replied.

‘Were you _following_ me?’

‘No, Arya, I WAS TAKING A FUCKING RIDE!!!’

Fear was beginning to break her courage into visible shards of glass before his eyes, and he could see and feel that he was frightening her badly, but he couldn’t stop now. Perhaps she needed to be frightened in order to see sense.

‘Lucion could be laid out _dead_ in the sept right now thanks to you!’ he enunciated cruelly.

‘Stop it, Jaime!’ Arya shouted at him; breaking.

‘He’s your fucking _son_ –’

‘Stop it –’

‘– and HE’S meant to be the centre of your world, NOT milk of the fucking poppy!’

‘STOP!’

‘I’M NOT GOING TO STOP!’

‘Stop SHOUTING at me; I can’t THINK with all this noise; I CAN’T!’

He ignored her.

‘I’m sending Lucion to foster at Riverrun.’

‘NO!’ Arya screamed.

‘– because there sure as hell isn’t anyone in THIS castle who is capable of taking care of him!’

‘ _I_ can take care of him!’ Arya thundered.

‘I can see that!’ Jaime bellowed.

‘ _The Freys_ rule at Riverrun!’

‘At the moment, I trust the Freys more with your son’s life that I do you!’

‘You – BASTARD!’

She attacked him again; this time with her bare hands.

‘You _promised_ me you wouldn’t send him away, you _promised_ , _you swore a vow_!’ she shrieked, punching and scratching in every area she could reach –

‘I break it, then,’ Jaime said; restraining her with one hand.

‘I won’t let you do this; I’ll die before I let you do this!’ she hollered; scratching like a dying animal as one restraining hand became two.

‘The boy will only get hurt if he stays here!’ Jaime insisted.

‘I don’t hurt my son!’

‘You have already!’

‘You know nothing about me, you fucking…FUCK!’

She tore out of his arms and stormed away from him; her body wolf-like and predatory and somehow helpless as she stood with her back to him; a tower of fire looking out to sea. Then she stalked back towards him and thrust his crimes into his face.

‘What gives you _any_ right to threaten to take my boy away from me?’ she spat, ‘to _think_ you have that right at all? Is it because you’re somehow BETTER than I am, as if you AREN’T the person who let them take me up North and marry Ramsay; as if you _didn’t_ give me over to that son-of-a-whore without so much as a word when I thought you were my _friend_ , or at least gave a fuck what happened to me! Well, you _did_ do it, Jaime; you betrayed me; _you left me_ ; and every single fucking time that Ramsay held me down and fucked me and hurt me and ‘made me do things,’ as you put it, that was _your fault_ ; when he finally found the right hole to squirt his fucking juices into and got me with child, and I drank moon tea by the gallon and threw myself off horses and down stairs, hurt myself, hated myself, drank an entire bottle of essence of fucking nightshade when nothing else worked, AND THE CHILD STILL WOULDN’T DIE –’

‘ARYA!’

‘ _THAT_ WAS _YOUR_ FAULT TOO!!!’

‘Why in FUCK would you try and kill yourself?’ Jaime bellowed.

‘ _Because I didn’t want to live_!’ Arya screamed at him.

‘And your son wasn’t worth fighting for?’

‘I wasn’t worth fighting for. What made some bastard’s child any different?’

‘I thought you loved your son.’

‘I _do_ love my son.’

‘Then you need to stop.’

‘I’M NOT GOING TO STOP!!!’

There was silence.

The words that Jaime might have spoken died, like hope in a winter storm; like living; with the past, with her, with himself. The past crashed in on him again. Again, it was a form of death.

‘I write to Lord Frey in the morning,’ he said.

Arya spat in his face.


	23. Chapter 23

Arya hesitated, the key in the lock.

It was night. No one would find her if.

She turned the key in the lock and heard it click. She walked to her bed. She lay down and waited for the dark.

She had decided to stop from the very moment that she had woken up on the beach and found her son gone. Part of her had even wanted to tell Jaime that; to tell him as he sat pressing down on Lucion’s chest, begging the unconscious child to wake up. For a time, it had broken through the worry and hysteria, that moment. Jaime cared for him. No one else ever seemed to.

But then he had come storming down to the infirmary, carried her off and bellowed orders at her while his fingers dug into her skin and held her down and held the fear inside her. So she hadn’t told him. She had flung his stupid, unknowing, burning words back at him and had relished every inch of exasperation, amazement, guilt and horror on his stupid Lannister face.

Until he had threatened to take her son away. Until he had taken the kind of control over her that Ramsay had always had, not all of it, but most, and she had hated him more intensely in the course of that single argument than she had ever hated her dead fucking husband.

If she wanted to stop, she would do it in her own way.

Arya stared at the ceiling and waited for the dark.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter weaves four different narratives together at the same time. It is confusing. It is meant to be.

Her skin was a fist; her being sweat-drenched and shivering from heat from cold from wet all over; her breath trapped and dying in her lungs; her body a slab of pulsing, hurting _meat_ that pinned her down to earth and pain and crooking fingers and memory and the whipping of her body by what she couldn’t now forget.

_Looking up into the red mist with that bastard of a maester standing over her, ‘you must push harder, my lady,’_

She was Lucion. She was kicking frantically for the surface; the force of the water wrapping her up like chains around a prisoner. Currents and rocks and foaming, frothing faces collided and clashed and screamed in the dark.

_she couldn’t, she was too hurt, too broken, and screaming and screaming as the child gutted its way out of her –_

She held her breath under the water, like she had done that one time when she had jumped into the lake so that Father wouldn’t find her. She had lasted fifteen seconds, then.

One, two, three, four, five –

_IS IT DEAD?’ she screamed._

She couldn’t remember falling through the air anymore; not the rush of the air around her as she dropped from the cliff to the sea; not the ecstatic, euphoric cold. She just felt scared.

Only cowards and stupid little girls get scared, she thought; pouting so she wouldn’t cry.

Casterly Rock; confined to a jail without a jailer; the jailer who she’d killed, but who still seemed to rattle his keys and laugh at her through the bars of her cage; ‘let’s play a game, little wife!’

When she had gone off to Braavos and come back, and found her new master sitting in his chambers, she had wanted to march up to him and hit him and scream into his face, ‘how could you let me go? How?’ And she wouldn’t only be talking about going to Braavos, and they would both know it, and they would very likely kill each other in the argument that followed, but at least she’d have her answer.

Instead, she had asked him ‘will you let me go?’ and every day since then, she had wanted to find him and demand to know why he had allowed her to go North and marry Ramsay and damn herself; why he had allowed her to leave for Braavos and freedom; why he hadn’t let her go, even though he had.

Six, seven, eight –

She was thrashing out with her arms and legs, and still she wasn’t moving. The world was a terrifying sea of bubbles and salt and blindness, Mother will come, she always comes –

Nine, ten, eleven, twelve –

‘Help yourself, you little fuck,’ Father was shouting at her; undoing his belt

Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen –

I can’t move my foot

**_She could still get up and get some – she could still make it to the maester’s chambers, wake him up –_ **

It was like a frost giant was holding on to her and trying to pull her into the rocks beneath and eat her.

Nineteen, twenty –

Mother, help me, please help me

Twenty-one, twenty-two –

Help yourself, you little fuck, help yourself

**_No, I said I would stop, have to stop –_ **

She opened her mouth to breathe

Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty…

_‘You have a living son, my lady,’ the maester said, and she couldn’t do anything but cry in spite of how weak and stupid it was; she didn’t want HIS child, she didn’t WANT it, only milk of the poppy for the pain and the blood and forgetting –_

**_You don’t need to do this, you can still have it_ **

Something was striking her from the inside of her chest; striking her from right inside the hole in it; hurting her

_‘What’s the matter with my pretty little wife?’ Ramsay was crooning; watching as the midwives wiped up the blood on her thighs, ‘doesn’t my little one like the sight of blood?’_

It wouldn’t go away, the thing in her chest – hitting and hitting and hitting, all over her body now and not just her chest.

_Ramsay was bending over to kiss her cheek_

_‘DON’T TOUCH ME!’_ _she screamed._

**_‘I trust the Freys more than I trust you,’ Jaime stormed._ **

The breakfast room window at Casterly Rock with a view down to the beach, which made anyone walking on it look the size of an ant. Sometimes – usually at midday, or in the late afternoons – she could sense something emanating from that window like a song: a gaze, a soul. And a thrill would creep briefly down her spine, and she would go back to shooting, and pretending not to notice.

_The midwife was forcing her to hold the thing. She wanted to drop it on the floor and say it was an accident._

The hammer in her chest was hitting her harder. It was starting to hurt now.

_It was so small. Fingers and toes the size of thimbles._

She could hear it, too; banging loudly against her as though her body were made of wood.

_It looked at her._

She screamed in pain.

_He had Jon’s eyes._

The hammer punched through her chest, bone and torn flesh stinging the air and her eyes. The blood poured out of her like a river; all the blood in her body in her chest; gushing out of it; she was clawing at it and watching it turn her hands red and screaming screaming screaming _-_

_‘Milk of the poppy is dangerous, my lady. To ask for so much in one week contradicts my vows to –’_

_‘Should I call Lord Ramsay and tell him you’re not being helpful to me?’_

The hammer felled her again, opening her stomach this time and breaking her spine to pieces _one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight_ as it flung her to the ground and cracked her open

**_‘What were you doing so close by anyway?’_ **

**_‘I was taking a ride.’_ **

**_‘Were you following me?’_ **

**_‘No, Arya, I WAS TAKING A FUCKING RIDE!!!’_ **

She could still hear the hammer, even now; every strike it made on her body like the sound of wood breaking; _is this how trees feel when they’re chopped down_ and she was too weak to do anything but lie prostrate and shiver and bleed and die; her mouth open in a voiceless, endless scream, then her own name coming out of her, shouted out in Jaime’s voice; and hands seizing her chin and holding her mouth open.

She heard the chink of glass. She smelled the smell she was trying to forget.

‘NO!’ Arya screamed, ‘No, no, NO!’

‘Hold her down!’ a voice shouted; Jaime’s hands on her shoulders; the voice’s hands shunting the bottle between her teeth.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Jaime’s voice roared.

The milk of the poppy froze her throat up. She choked. She couldn’t breathe. Her smashed spine seemed to dig into her ruined chest, and force out more blood than she had lost already.

Jaime was shouting at the voice and the voice was shouting back.

‘If she dies – _if she dies_ ’

 _Too late, Kingslayer,_ Arya thought, _I’m dead._

She dreamed that she was still in bed. She dreamed that she was crying: deep, terrible sobs that rasped on and on forever. Jaime was holding them, and her, at bay. Her face was pressed into his chest and her arms were clutching him hard; all the strength in her body compressed into her fingers. One of his hands was trailing softly through her hair; comforting her as a parent would a child. The other rested on her back; his thumb tracing a tiny half-circle across the material of her shift. She expected to smell blood and death. All she smelt were her own tears.

She was so ashamed, and so tired, and so, so afraid, and all she seemed to be able to do was cry about it, with him, _why_ him? Why was it always _him_?

_At least it’s only a dream this time. There’s no one to remember it but you._

She could feel the milk of the poppy they’d given her singing sweetly in her veins, and she was appalled at the cruelty of it; demanding that she stop, only to pour more down her throat the moment she tried. It was the sort of thing that Ramsay would have done, and the thought made her cry out.

‘Why did you give me more?’ Arya sobbed into Jaime’s chest.

Jaime was so quick in answering her that his words seemed to tumble over themselves.

‘The maester…the maester says you can’t just stop,’ Jaime stammered; sounding afraid and exhausted, ‘apparently you can’t just…you need to…you must…Lucion is being taken care of; he doesn’t know what’s happening…’

His words trailed off until only his warmth was left. She didn’t understand. She didn’t press him. She didn’t want her son here now. She bit on her tears, swallowed them, and felt them surge within her once more as Jaime’s fingers continued to trail comfortingly across her back. Those fingers were a kind of witchery, pulling her halfway out of the waking world and halfway into the warmth as she cried and cried and cried from a thousand different kinds of shame.

 _It’s just a dream; it’s only a dream_ , she told herself; trying to nestle closer to Jaime, even though it was impossible.

She yelped in surprise as Jaime seized her by the scruff of the neck with both his hands and yanked her head upwards to face him.

‘You stupid, _stupid girl_!’ he growled, furious.

She looked at his thunderous face through the tears and the mess and expected him to continue in the same vein as earlier. She tensed up immediately; her body too weak to move away from him; her mind out of the door already.

Then his face changed. His grip softened. And his fingers slowly unlocked from each other; drifting from her neck to her face, which they brushed gently, as though she were made of porcelain.

‘You stupid, stupid, _stupid_ girl,’ Jaime murmured; his face lined and tired; his eyes a violent storm in which emerald fire seemed to slumber, and as his left hand gently smoothed her hair out of her eyes, a thing that she assumed was her heart began to thunder, loudly and painfully, and embarrassment to make her head spin.

_It’s just a dream._

She tore her eyes away from Jaime’s, something within her dying as she did so. She looked towards the door. It had been smashed off its hinges; a ruin of splintered wood and nails.

She realised something, and looked back at Jaime.

‘You were never going to send Lucion to the Freys,’ she said; ‘were you?’

He slowly shook his head.

‘No,’ he told her.

A dreadful sound erupted from her throat; a half-scream of pain and relief; she was so _tired_ and miserable and so fucking ashamed at how _weak_ she’d become; how she had to lean on this man for comfort because there was no one else; how she had to _dream_ about leaning on this man for comfort because there was no one else; and her head slumped once more against Jaime’s chest; and she wept for her entire life; for hers and for her son’s.

He remained silent; no idiotic words of comfort or attempts at escape leaving his lips; just his arms around her, tighter and tighter, crushing her tears into his chest while his fingers danced soothing ghosts of intimacy across her back; his breath thundering hot, steady and constant in her madness and her misery; turning her sobs to ragged breaths and the red mist to black; turning Jaime’s body into night, and sleep, and warmth. She began to sink into the darkness. He shushed her as she sank deeper.

‘Go to sleep,’ he whispered.

‘Why are you always telling me to sleep?’ she mumbled.

He didn’t answer, and that in itself was more soothing than anything he could have said.

She was very close to sleep now; to falling asleep in the middle of a dream. Jaime kissed her forehead; making her heart surge, then ache, and though every inch of her seemed to hurt, she found that the tears were gone, leaving only rawness and numbness in their wake.

Sleep enfolded her like a shroud that left only her mouth uncovered. Jaime wrapped himself around her; his body a soft shell around hers.

‘Why are you doing this?’ Arya mumbled; closing her eyes and yielding.

‘Because I love you,’ Jaime murmured into her hair; and she slid from one dream into the next.


	25. Chapter 25

_She’s haunting my dreamworld_

_Trying to survive_

_My heart is frozen_

_I’m losing my mind_

* * *

 

The nights are the worst. Not just her nightmares, but mine. Every time I close my eyes, I see her there: lying on her bed screaming, her hands clutched to her chest, stemming the flow of blood from wounds that only she could see.

I didn’t exactly want to lie there and hold her – it probably wasn’t the smartest idea, particularly after she almost broke her neck on the wedding morning trying to get _away_ from my tender fucking caresses. But she was wretched, and alone, and I hadn’t much enjoyed the idea of her dying, so I _did_ hold her. When she responded by turning immediately to me to sink deeper into my arms, it felt as though she’d torn my fucking heart out of my chest and eaten it. She was beyond what I had done to her; desperate for any form of touch that would make her feel safe, even for a few fucking seconds. That probably means I took advantage, even though it doesn’t feel that way.

It made me think of the night the news of the Red Wedding came, when she was a little savage of three-and-ten. By the time I reached her after hearing it trumpeted out across the entire city, she’d broken every bit of furniture in her chambers and smashed most of the windows. I didn’t dare offer comfort. I didn’t dare touch her. I didn’t even dare look at her for too long. But I stayed with her anyway. That was the nature of her fire: it pulled you in when everything in you told you that _allowing_ yourself to be pulled in was a bad fucking idea.

She screamed at me and attacked me; her tiny fingers trying to claw my eyes out and her fists pounding on my chest in a way that she must have known could do no damage. Then she sat in the window seat and stared at nothing. I sat on the floor and pretended to.

Eventually, she came to sit next to me, exhausted with anger and grief. When I put a tentative arm around her, she decided to start crying. I didn’t enjoy that. Wiping up tears is not what I was made for. To make matters worse, I couldn’t even call myself sorry for what had happened: I had known her family, and had found them dull to the point of wondering how living with them for all those years had not made her want to scream with boredom. So I sat still as a statue as she cried against me; the awkwardness of the entire bloody situation twisting my insides in a far worse way than what I considered to be normal at the time.

And when she quietened down, I told her about Aerys.

I still don’t know why the fuck I did it. I’d told no one else, for reasons that are none of your fucking business, so I took myself firmly in hand and told myself to stop. None of it helped. I just opened my mouth and talked; spitting out the innermost part of me, to be heard by anyone who might have been passing the door at the time.

To be heard by her.

She sat staring at me for a long while. She said something about my seeming better in her eyes, if no less stupid. And we moved on. She told no one else, and I never made such an outrageous bloody mistake again.

Then a few days ago, after I found her half-mad and screaming at the empty air; after I lay next to her with my arms around her and the maester’s words that ‘her heart has stopped, my lord’ still beating away at the inside of my fucking head, she asked me why I was helping her. And once again, I just opened up my mouth and _talked_ , without hesitation and with total honesty, as though I were saying nothing of any great importance.

I don’t know whether or not she heard me. She didn’t reply at the time. When I looked down at her, I saw that she had fallen asleep again. She did not speak of it afterwards, and now, it is the least of my worries. If the girl has anything resembling a brain, then she has always known.

The nights are the worst. Not just my nightmares, but hers: her life as it is without milk of the poppy; with three small doses per day; with being ‘weaned off it’, as the bloody maester likes to call it; as though she were some dog suckling at her mother’s teats.

Every night I feel her bolt out of bed beside me and retch into the nearest vessel she can find: the basin, the water jug, her chamber pot, if she’s lucky. Sometimes she doesn’t even get that far. She refuses to keep a pan next to the bed.

As she retches, I go to her. I hold her hair back so she doesn’t get vomit all over it. Sometimes she cries and vomits at the same time. I sit beside her on the floor and keep my mouth shut as she gags.

Sometimes in the night, she soils herself. She refuses to have a handmaiden, and she’s too weak to do anything about it herself (not that she hasn’t tried – the first time, she almost broke her neck). I sit there like a moron with my hands that were made for killing; prodding and poking as she sits in the tub half-conscious, naked and covered in shit; trusting me not to bend her over and fuck her from behind. And even though my cock is hard as a fucking tree branch for every minute of it, I find myself… _not_ wanting to bend her over and fuck her from behind. No, don’t laugh. It’s true, and it makes my bloody head ache. I can’t fucking explain it.  It’s as if my desire for her has become something else, or been added to something else: another layer in the hundreds of layers that make up her and me. I can tell that she knows it too, and is even more confused than I am, with her mind half-alive and her body half-living. Sometimes, when I’ve been wringing out a rag, or towel, or sponge, or whatever the fuck you call it, I look up to find her staring at me across the length of her nakedness with a strange look in her wolf eyes; her teats rising and falling with her breath; her nipples hard and red like those tiny fruit in the castle garden that drop into your mouth when they ripen, if you lie beneath the branches that keep them fixed to earth.

In her sleep, she speaks non-stop of her dead husband, screams, threatens, pleads for her son and never for herself. Her small hands will move to shield her face, or to clutch white-knuckled at whichever part of her body she dreams is being mutilated. She screams for her father, her mother, her brothers. She screams names that I don’t recognise – Weese, Yoren, Mycah, Jaqen, Gendry, Hot Pie (if that’s even a name at all).  She screams plenty of names I do – Joffrey, Cersei, Ilyn Payne, Meryn Trant, The Mountain, The Hound…Tywin Lannister. Sometimes she screams for me. The same words, again and again. _How could you let me go._

When I wake her –and I always do – she’ll lash out and scream not to be touched and stare aimlessly at the ceiling until sleep claims her again; or huddle against me like a frightened animal; whimpering if a single inch of her skin does not touch mine. 

In the daytime, she is barely rational. She never stops trying to get up; never stops falling. She has monstrous waking dreams that are part-memory, part-nightmare; her hair plastered to her forehead from the cold sweat that permanently covers her boiling skin. The retching doesn’t stop. She is barely strong enough to move, until her little bottle of milk of the poppy arrives, and she flies across the room like an arrow launched from a crossbow to drink it down too quickly.

She always wants more. We always refuse to give it to her. Sometimes she attacks the maester, sometimes me, sometimes both. Sometimes she simply lies in bed and cries for her son, and it has to be explained to her that he isn’t here, that he can’t see her like this; that I sent him to stay with Addam at Ashemark until she is well again: apparently Addam has a bastard daughter of three-and-ten who can fight with a sword as well as any boy; and Arya always smiles weakly at that: ‘I’d give anything to be a fly on the wall,’ she’ll say.

Sometimes she’ll forget her name. Sometimes she’ll forget mine. And I am helpless. I’m run through. I can’t kill to make her happy, and I can’t kill to protect her. I can only watch her die each day, and ask the old gods – hers – for whatever mercy they may have to give.

I’m a fool.              

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is exam time once again, so updates will be sporadic, short and very likely non-existent over the course of the next month. I’ll try my best to update when I can. Thank you for all the amazing support and enthusiasm: you are all awesome!


	26. Chapter 26

The dreams started in the middle; in the middle of that place between life and death; between opening his mouth and letting water gush into it, and passing into the black fog that marked the crossing to the other side. As he died, he dreamed of Ser Rickard and Mother, together in the ocean, swimming out to sea to look for him. He dreamed of them not finding him until he was dead. He saw his own interment in southern soil; Mother sitting on her haunches with her arms wrapped around herself, flying at the septon as he arrived uninvited, ‘ _There are no gods_ , you fucking fool, can’t you _see_?’ Ser Rickard tried to raise her to her feet, but she screamed at him too; the slightest human touch unbearable to her as her nails tore bloody pathways in the flesh of her own cheeks.

He had woken, then, too weak to shout in horror, and he hadn’t died.

The dreams hadn’t died either. They came every night. He knew that they couldn’t be real – the things in them were too stupid – but that didn’t stop them from troubling him.

He saw a lioness, thin, meagre and starving, stalking the grounds of Casterly Rock; her eyes glowing green in the darkness.

He saw Ser Rickard sitting on his haunches in the middle of a room filled with broken furniture. His head was in his hands. He was whimpering something.

The door banged open, and Mother walked in.

‘You will not believe the night I’ve had,’ she said; crossing to the (predictably intact) liquor cabinet and taking a long draught of wine straight out of the bottle.

She had barely set the bottle down again before Ser Rickard had leapt to his feet and had crossed the room to where she stood; startling her.

‘You alright?’ Mother asked, ‘you look –’

Ser Rickard touched her face. Mother stared at him. She stared at the room. She stared at Ser Rickard again.

‘Jaime, you didn’t think –’

He saw Mother lying on the floor in a dark room that looked like a cellar; crying, whimpering and vomiting into a pool of her own sick. A thick, white mist was descending on her; enveloping her limbs and becoming her clothing; its tendrils wrapping around her throat, and nose and mouth, until she couldn’t breathe.

Mother’s limbs began to twitch. Lucion began to scream. And Ser Rickard was there _again;_ always him; bursting into the room and turning Mother over and bellowing;

‘What the fuck have you DONE?’

The lioness was circling them, and neither of them could see her; Mother, who was dead, Ser Rickard who was cradling her body and crying because she was dead, and Lucion screaming and screaming as the lioness pounced; and the feeling of her claws digging into his own flesh yanked hold of his shoulders and shook him back into the waking world; so badly that it ripped the breath from his lungs and made him choke on his own tears.

He wrote the next day to Casterly Rock; demanding to know if his mother was still alive. A raven came back almost immediately, in Ser Rickard’s handwriting, saying that she was much better.

Lucion crumpled up the lie and threw it into the fire.

* * *

 

 

**From Ser Jaime Lannister, at Casterly Rock, to the Lady Genna Lannister, at Riverrun.**

My dear Aunt

My stubborn little shit of a wife will not allow me to engage so much as a skivvy to help her through her illness. She professes herself too weak to leave her room and get the fresh air that she needs, but she is not, apparently, too weak to have a drawer of knives brought up from the kitchen, or to spend hours throwing them at the doorpost. As a consequence of her recklessness, I am veritably glued to her side for most of every day, and am unable to get to the training yard as often as I would wish. I have threatened her with a sound thrashing, but that seems to have had no effect whatsoever.

My shame at being unable to control my own wife being now outweighed by utter fucking desperation, I wonder if I might ask you to pay us a visit at Casterly Rock and advise me on the situation?

Your respectful nephew

Jaime

Oh, and please don’t bring your husband. I can’t guarantee that Arya won’t chop his balls off the first time they meet.

* * *

 

**From the Lady Genna Lannister, at Riverrun, to Ser Jaime Lannister, at Casterly Rock.**

My dear Jaime

Is that your way of saying that being unable to help her is driving you insane?


	27. Chapter 27

Arya tightened her grip on the spoon; her shaking hands making it clatter against the side of the bowl.

Jaime watched her for a few moments more, then lost his temper.

‘For fuck’s sake, will you just give it here?’ he snapped.

Arya noisily let the spoon drop; spraying them both with gruel.

Jaime gritted his teeth, gingerly stirred the unappetising mixture in the hopes of making it look more appealing, and, grateful that he wasn’t the one who had to eat it, brought a spoonful to Arya’s lips.

She jerked her head away. He glared at her.

‘You need to eat it.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Do you want to get better?’

‘Explain to me how that stuff will make me better.’

‘The maester explained it to me, but I had trouble keeping up. He used a lot of long words.’

‘I don’t want it.’

‘If you eat it, I’ll let you play with my dagger.’

He watched her fight with herself for a moment and tried hard to keep from smiling as she wrestled with the problem; her lips pursing slowly into a childish pout.

After a few moments’ silence, she opened her mouth. She allowed him to slip the spoon between her lips, and silently swallowed its contents without complaint. Jaime tried his best to appear disinterested in what he was doing, knowing how humiliating this must be for her, but he had considerable doubts as to his success. Not looking at her was impossible, especially now.  She hadn’t been sick that entire day, and her face, while still pale and gaunt, had lost its habitual sheen of green, so that her skin seemed to glow; pearl-like with the possibility of health. Beautiful.

The night was deathly quiet around them, and the room was filled with the smell of the sea. The maester had ordered the fire to be built up and all the windows to be boarded up. Aunt Genna had ordered the windows to be opened and the fire to be extinguished. The maester _had_ tried to argue with her. For about five seconds.

Jaime snorted with laughter.

‘What’s so funny?’ Arya demanded in a shrill voice.

‘I was thinking about Aunt Genna,’ Jaime hastily replied; trying to appear reassuring.

‘I did enjoy the maester’s face,’ Arya said, smiling wickedly, ‘has she always been so…’

‘So…?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Frightening?’

‘No, not frightening. It’s more like…’

‘ _Exactly_. Are you done?’

‘Yes.’

Jaime plonked the empty bowl onto the bed beside him and gently wiped her mouth for her, lightly touching the napkin to the corners of her lips as his fingers grew damp with the heat of her breath.

When he took the cloth away, she was staring at him, with a strange expression in her eyes.

‘What?’ Jaime asked.

‘Thank you,’ Arya murmured; her expression embarrassed and awkward, her eyes so gloriously soft that they made his blood burn in his veins.

She pointedly pulled her gaze away from him and began to play with the dagger.

He observed her for a while. She barely had enough strength to grip it.

‘Are you ready for bed?’

‘Yes.’

He watched her scoot down as far as she could, then helped her; his arms wrapping softly around her back and lifting her; her ribs hard like iron through the fabric of her shift; her breath hot on his neck.

‘Alright?’ he murmured as he carefully set her down again; his lips at her ear.

‘Yes,’ she whispered back; her breath weak and ragged as he straightened up and watched her continue to play with the dagger and stab at the empty air; at the two seconds that had just passed and that passed every night; the two seconds in which he helped her lie down again and in which the two of them became lovers: pressed together, breathing feverishly, and whispering to each other in the half-dark.

‘Jaime.’

‘Yes?’

‘Why did you let me go?’

Jaime stared at her momentarily, then tucked the blankets up to her chin and tried to appear firm.

‘Go to sleep,’ he ordered.

‘Answer me,’ she replied.

He tried. He choked on his words. They stopped on the way to his mouth and became other things. They reverted, then, to what they had been before: a reminder, a making-alive of everything that he had deluded himself into thinking that she might forget; that he might tell her, one day, one day when it no longer mattered.

‘I…’ Jaime stammered; trying to stop himself; ‘my sister…’

‘Your sister?’ Arya prompted, scarcely giving him time to pause in hesitation.

‘Arya…’ he murmured; in that quiet, hushed, uncomfortably-sensuous tone of voice that always seemed to shut her up and turn her cheeks red in embarrassment.

‘ _What_ , Jaime?’ Arya insisted; her face pale like mountain snow.

_Please don’t make me do this, say this, do this to you, say this to you, please, I love you, please._

‘Please tell me,’ she said softly, and her voice was like an axe; smashing through his desire to protect himself, and her; leaving them exposed to the cold; naked, trembling and dying.

‘I was… a… coward….’ he stuttered; every word an agony.

‘What about your sister?’ Arya interrupted; tender as a bull in a milliner’s.

_I can’t say this. I can’t._

He said it anyway.

‘Before…there was never anyone but her… before…I grew up with its being her. I believed that she…and I…were the same person…and… I never thought it was wrong, not until…not for the same…not because…’

_She wasn’t interrupting him. Why wasn’t she interrupting him?_

‘…not because she was my…sister, but…but…because…’

‘WHAT?’

‘ – but because…I found you…that night in the training yard, at midnight, attacking that bloody straw man…and...and maybe…maybe from that time, from that second that I spoke to you…as a girl…I have… loved you.’

There was a deathly silence.

He expected her to say something. To scream at him, at the very least.

She said nothing.

His mouth kept talking, though all of him bade him shut his mouth and hold his peace.

‘I have loved you…wildly…with a…wildness…that I…’

She still wasn’t saying anything. He still wasn’t shutting up.

‘…she grew away from me…and I from her…she knew something had happened…the mother of my children, the woman I had sworn, so many times, to marry no matter what the price… my…love for you was a…betrayal of her, I thought…not realising that it was…the other way round…that it always would be, _Arya, **gods**_...’

His voice broke. Her silence did not. His heart was a dead-weight in his chest. A dead-weight made of regret and guilt and blame.

‘I let you go…betrayed you… for that reason. For the worst…for the most…because if you left, she would never know of the treason I had committed…she would never guess…and the world would never know either, that a child, and a Stark…a girl twenty-five years my junior, had...Arya, I was a child and a…’

Her expression was utterly illegible. Her eyes burned into him. Her face was a white mask of horror, and retribution, and wrath; her fingers around the dagger white-knuckled, tight and strong.

He wanted to speak. To ask for forgiveness; to condemn himself.

Arya gave him no time and no opportunity as she flung herself upright and plunged the dagger into his chest.


	28. Chapter 28

The blade glanced off Jaime’s chest; embedding itself in his shoulder. It was a small wound: the kind that people get every day. I wanted to put both my hands on the hilt and shove it deeper into him, then pull it out, inch by inch, and watch him bleed to death. I wanted to stand over him and watch the breath leave his lips. I wanted him to know that _I_ had done it; the scrawny, helpless little girl that he had fucked over and sent to hell for no better reason than being scared of what people would _think_. My heart was hurting me; pounding with the unnaturalness of it; that he, of all people, should have given a fuck _, at any time_ , what people would think, what _Cersei_ would think. I had imagined a thousand reasons across a thousand years of blood and pain and nothingness: that he did it because I kissed him in the boat; because I _talked_ to him in the boat when it was clear that he didn’t want to talk to me anymore; that he did it because I had been there, that night in the sept, to hold him up when he fell; that he did it to get back at my father; to get back at me for being so close to _his_ father; to get back at me for being the only person at court who didn’t kiss the ground he walked on. I had never imagined anything so cruel, stupid, senseless, _selfish_ as this…that he was capable of sacrificing me to this. This was worse, worse than anything, so much worse it made me sick.

Jaime sat looking at me with the tip of the dagger still sticking out of his shoulder like a toy. All I needed to do was lean forward, seize the hilt and put all my weight on it; _the fucking bastard_ , and I could sit here and watch him bleed out for as long as I wanted; _watch him die; watch him die in agony –_

Jaime’s eyes locked suddenly onto mine like wildfire, and I told myself that the resulting ache in my body came from not having drunk any milk of the poppy since midday. I tensed as he lifted his hand, slowly – I’m guessing so as not to startle me (he cares so much about that kind of bullshit) – and his fingers closed firmly around the hilt to pull the blade out.

He tightened his grip and pushed the dagger deeper.

I might have screamed. Or perhaps I didn’t. I saw pain boil up in his eyes which never left mine: pain and a total lack of fear; a certainty that what he was doing was right.

_It is._

I could feel my body coiling up; screams of triumph gathering in my chest and begging to be set free.

The only things that burst from my mouth were tears.

Of joy, I told myself.

Jaime thrust the blade into his shoulder, all the way up to the hilt. His blood was hot against my skin as his face contorted in agony. He didn’t say anything. I reached for my bottle of milk of the poppy, and it wasn’t there. Then he fainted, plummeting forwards so quickly that he almost crushed me to death.

I shoved him violently away from me. I couldn’t hold him up. I didn’t want to. His blood was spreading across the coverlet; making the air heavy with red mist, and I was falling; the wound staining my shift; the ashen grey of his face telling me without words that he had seen what I had wanted to do to him, and had done it for me because I was too weak to do it myself.

He thought that was what I wanted.

It _was_ what I wanted. It _was_.

My scars were screaming out to me: every scar marking every place where Ramsay had violated me over the years seeming to come alive and speak to me: ‘We’re here because of him. He helped Ramsay break you. He might as well have stood by and watched; laughing with the Bastard’s Boys.’

_He killed most of the Bastard’s Boys for hurting me._

I looked down. Jaime’s head had landed in my lap. I wanted to snort with laughter. It was like we were at the end of some stupid song: the handsome prince dying in the arms of the distressed princess that he had fucked over because thinking for himself was too fucking difficult for his stupid brain.

Bile began to rise in my throat as I watched him dying; my throat that had no air. His skin that had so often seemed like living sunlight to me grew cold and red beneath my fingers; cold and lifeless. His hands that had held me up and felt cool on the back of my neck as I retched; his hands that hadn’t shaken, that had remained firm and warm and safe on nights I soiled myself; his eyes unseeing and gently unconscious of my humiliation as he scrubbed my arse and cleaned up my shit while I sat naked, half-conscious and dying of shame; nothing in his face protesting, or saying how revolting it was, or how he didn’t have to do any of it.

His hands that were boiling now, and twitching; fighting his natural instinct to defend himself; letting himself bleed out and die.

_Good. I’m glad he held it off long enough for me to watch._

And even though I was only holding up his head, it felt as though his entire body was still fainting, still falling onto mine, heavy with death; the weight increasing with my every struggle and yanking me further down into the world of half-memory: his silences as he cleaned up my sick when I didn’t get to the basin on time; his silences when I sat on my knees for hours and retched, half-awake, half-asleep, helpless; his silences, his refusals to speak any stupid words of comfort that wouldn’t mean anything. His voice and my heart when we fought, endlessly and stupidly, about gruel, water, dosages; his voice and my heart when he found me, with my voice tearing out of me and my heart ceasing to beat, a prisoner in a place that only I could see. His warmth at night that didn’t crush me and that didn’t make me feel afraid of him…we were sharing a bed now. When did we start sharing a bed? I couldn’t even remember. Was the bed in my chambers or his? Where were we?

In his delirium, he murmured a name.

Mine.

I reached for my bottle of milk of the poppy and it wasn’t there. My hands wiped beads of sweat from his forehead, and they were stained with blood. I leaned forward and softly kissed his forehead, as he had done so many times for me, and my heart, _gods_ –

I had pictured his face like this so many times: pale, in pain, dying, and my doing, but now I couldn’t, I couldn’t even…just looking at…if he dies…Jaime, don’t…

_‘I will not ask for your forgiveness. I do not deserve it. But let me do this for you. I failed to help you before. Let me help you now.’_

I wanted to shove him away from me, but all I could do was hold him tighter and kiss his face; my hair covering both of us like a death shroud; as though by holding him I could protect him from myself.

Then my scars screamed at me again; my heart; my insides that Ramsay had mutilated so badly, one night, that the maester had said I could never have a child again. The lashes on my back from the whip; the slices from the bloodlust and the jabs from the _fun_. The monsters in my head, the nights of hating and dreaming and crying and writing like a stupid little girl. My son. His life. His non-childhood. Injuring himself trying to protect me while I screamed at him to stop and his father laughed and hit him. Our silence. Our death.

I took my hands away from Jaime’s face. It was like I was wearing red gloves. My heart was hammering with revenge, and the wolf in my blood was howling. From joy, I told myself. From joy. My fingers closed around the hilt of the blade, and made ready to pull it out of him. He would die quickly after that, and I would finally have revenge.

I felt wetness on my cheeks, and realised I was crying. So I spoke silently to myself, screamed to myself, _he deserves to die, he deserves it, it doesn’t matter what he’s done now, he betrayed you, he sacrificed you, he sent you away to Ramsay and he knew what he was doing, he didn’t care about you, he didn’t love you no matter what he says, he didn’t come for you, he betrayed you, he betrayed you, HE BETRAYED YOU._

I felt my mouth opening and howling in wrath and agony, and another, higher voice joining to mine as I pulled on the dagger, hard.

‘DON’T!’ it roared, as I was slammed suddenly and painfully onto my back beneath the impact of a strong arm, shoving me.

My evening dose of milk of the poppy slipped from the maester’s fingers and smashed.

‘YOU MUST NOT REMOVE THE BLADE!’ he bellowed, ‘do you not understand these things in the North?’


	29. Chapter 29

Arya was dimly conscious of Aunt Genna shouting at her; her podgy Lannister fingers digging into her shoulders and her lips moving as her face curled and uncurled in hysteria disguised as anger.

The maester had hastily concluded that Jaime’s injury was self-inflicted and had had nothing to do with her.

Aunt Genna hadn’t believed him.

‘That boy is like a son to me,’ Aunt Genna bellowed; spraying Arya with spit as her considerable bosom heaved in agitation; ‘and if anything, ANYTHING, happens to him, I will have your skinny Northern posterior broken at the wheel and –’

 _Leave me alone,_ Arya thought; her voice gone; her strength gone; _please leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone_

The walls of the antechamber were closing in around her; the entire world alighting on the golden-haired woman before her whose eyes were enflamed with the same wildfire-green anger that Tywin’s had had, and she was melting, then – Aunt Genna – her body submerged and torn apart by the moisture leaking from Arya’s eyes and turning the present into a distant illusion; like music being played three rooms away.

Jaime’s blood was still wet on her clothing and hands, she could smell it all over herself _what have I done dear gods what have I done_ she could hear his voice hissing in pain as his hand gripped hold of the dagger and pushed it deeper into himself; she could see each bead of sweat erupting on his forehead as his body screamed out at the violation; she saw his hands twitching, fighting not to fight, _Jaime, gods_ ; she saw herself _just sitting there_ ; she hadn’t seen herself, just sitting there, until it was too late, until the maester had her and Aunt Genna thrown out of the room while he tried to save her husband’s life, moments wasted minutes wasted in which she could have called for help or gone for help, she should have gone for help immediately instead of sitting there and thinking about revenge, because this was revenge, revenge was what was happening in the next room, revenge was what was going to happen in the next room in the next few minutes; she clamped her hands over her ears and she could still hear Jaime moaning her name as he bled out; still hear him, _Arya…Arya…ARYA…_

She felt her mind cry out for milk of the poppy as Aunt Genna cried for her head, and then Tyrion was bursting into the room, _‘What in seven hells is going on?’_ he roared; and her mind still wanted the drug, but her body didn’t, she couldn’t feel it anymore, couldn’t feel the need sinking from her skin right down to her bones; not now; because it wasn’t the foundation of her life anymore, not it, but him; and Aunt Genna and Tyrion were shouting at each other, ‘I tell you the girl is responsible in some way!’ ‘In _what_ way? SHE CAN BARELY WALK!’

She could see Jaime again, his head in her lap, and the bloodied mess of where his shoulder was, the blood spreading everywhere, getting onto everything, and it was like her blood her blood her blood, no, Lucion’s, like Lucion’s blood being everywhere; there was too much light and too much noise; she was crouched on her haunches covering her ears while the two Lannisters quarrelled; Aunt Genna turning redder and redder and Tyrion turning whiter and whiter; there was a scream of agony from next door and her knees buckled beneath her, ‘TOWELS!’ the maester’s voice shouted; a ghastly silence; the sound of hot metal meeting flesh; another scream _no gods not that don’t hurt him don’t Jaime JAIME NO_

A moment of darkness, then light again, she must have fainted, neither Lannister had noticed, they were still fighting; her head was a mass of confused fucked-up lightness and weight; she tried to stand, she couldn’t; she could feel the heat from next door coming through the wall _what have I done dear gods what have I done_ and everything she had thought of earlier, every reason she had thought of to save him came back into her mind to kill her; _he helped me, he saved me, he didn’t laugh at me, he could have fucked me bloody a thousand times and he didn’t; Ramsay would have had me whipped each time I threw up, each time I soiled myself, each time I said things I shouldn’t have in fever; he wouldn’t have played fucking nursemaid,  or let me share his bed for all that time; he’d have held me down and laughed and fucked me no matter how sick I was_

_Jaime what have I done_

_Jaime what have I done_

 

* * *

 

Hours later, no sleep, bundled into the room with the heat; heat and candles and fresh bed linen, Jaime lying in the midst of it, pale, alive, silent, gaze cutting like a knife.

A rush of blood to the head; a searing pain in her eyes and throat; a desire to rush across the room to him.

Maester approaches.

‘He’s very weak,’ the maester says, ‘and he’s lost a lot of blood. You should not stay longer than five minutes.’

‘I thought he wanted to see me,’ Arya mumbles.

‘All the same,’ the maester continues, ‘he needs to rest.’

The maester leaves. Guards are standing inside the door.

‘Get out,’ Jaime says to them.

‘My lord, Lady Genna has ordered us –’

‘Get. The fuck. Out.’

They run.

Arya is left standing in the middle of the room with her heart turning black with shame. Jaime remains silent, watching without fear; an alert, glassy-eyed look from the milk of the poppy they’ve given him. Arya shuffles towards the bed. No speaking. As she gets closer, blood seeps through his bandages. Guilt and horror smart with every footstep. They incarnate into the shape of his face and his eyes that are alive; his eyes that were closed and dead _Jaime what have I done_.

He looks at her. He smiles at her. Her heart breaks.

In his smile, she sees him dead. She sees him as she thought she wanted him. She sees herself standing beside him, alive, but dead as well, her hand reaching out for him, her hand still too afraid, too proud to touch.

In that moment, the full weight of what she had done, or not done, came crashing in on her like the fall of light; as if all of her perished in a single moment of horror and left nothing but a gaping chasm that might have been all of her life to come. Jaime was speaking, but she couldn’t hear him; she was walking to him in a rush of excruciating, searing relief and leaning down; her mouth sealing his awkwardly and messily, and pulling back ever so slightly as more tears came, and more.

‘I’m sorry,’ Arya sobbed as Jaime stared up at her, his face gentle and his lips parted; ‘ _I’m sorry –_ ’

Jaime craned his neck and brushed his lips against hers; his free hand coming up to touch her cheek, and the void was there again, then disappearing again; her tears salty in her mouth, then his.

The world contracted suddenly into him and her. It felt like she was going to pass out again. His entire body was heavy with the stench of blood, but his lips as they captured hers were alive and sent blood rushing to the surface of her skin like a naked flame that only hurt in a good way; _is that even possible_

It was like she had been released from something. Her hands framed Jaime’s face and helped him sink back down into the mattress, and her lips when she kissed him again were harder than she would have liked; heated and frenzied in a way that made her feel bare and vulnerable and defenceless; an innocent with no idea what she was doing as Jaime’s mouth opened beneath hers and kissed her softly; sighing into her as though she were beautiful.

Jaime hissed in pain as her fingers touched the bare skin of his neck; waking up the corridors of pain coursing outwards from his shoulder; and when she tried, panicked, to pull away, he only pulled her closer and kissed her deeper; the fingers of his hand stroking her hair as though she were made of porcelain that lived and breathed and broke.

‘You stupid,’ Arya sobbed against his mouth, ‘you _stupid_ , why did you do it; why the fuck _–_ ’

Jaime kissed her once more, fiercely; his fingers tracing the line of her jaw as she quaked and trembled and cried; her heart beating so fast she was sure it would kill her.

‘I did it as a peace offering,’ Jaime murmured; his sweat-drenched hair golden in the candlelight; ‘I’m so tired of all this _shit_ –’

‘What if the wound goes bad?’ Arya sniffled; wiping her nose on her sleeve.

‘I don’t want…I don’t want forgiveness or…’ he plunged on, ignoring her, ‘I keep my word as before –’

‘I know, but –’

‘But can we at least be bloody friends?’

Arya stared at him; her muddled brain almost blotting out her vision in its attempts to understand what the fuck _that_ was supposed to mean.

It didn’t succeed.

‘Do you always kiss your friends like that?’ she eventually mumbled.

‘No,’ Jaime confessed, ‘but then I didn’t have much of a choice in this case; you just _came_ at me – ’

‘Fuck you, Jaime!’

‘I’m not insulting you, you little fool!’

‘You could have fooled me!’

Arya folded her arms with a humph and sat glowering at him; her smouldering eyes strongly indicative of a desire to remove his head from his shoulders, though he thought he saw the ghost of a smile around her lips: just a little one.

He waited for her to stab him again, or at the very least to start arguing with him again.

When she did neither, he reached for her, and when his fingertips brushed her lips, she kissed them.

* * *

 

 

END OF PART 2


	30. Chapter 30

PART 3: THE LIONESS

Tyrion glanced around the forecourt at the freezing ranks of Lannisters, half-Lannisters, one-quarter-Lannisters and one-eighth-Lannisters and blandly wondered which of the gods had decided to piss on him this time as a bitterly cold rain blew in off the sea and began to soak them all to the bone. The servants stood stock still and uncaring with the iron fortitude (or iron fear) that Tyrion’s father had instilled in them from the beginning of his tenure as Lord of Casterly Rock. The crowd of blond heads was not quite as disciplined. Tyrion heard shrieks of consternation from ladies (and from quite a number of men); he heard barks from septas and maesters as they restrained those of their young charges who wanted to run away; and he heard a sharp remark of ‘Oh gods, how very tiresome’ from Aunt Genna; who had spent most of the previous day engaged in a duel with her dressmaker so that her gown could be ready on time.

At that moment, only the deepest sense of protocol kept everyone from running for cover, and Tyrion was sorely tempted to tell them all to retire to the hall and leave their guest to find them there.

The only two nobles present who didn’t seem to notice the rain were Tyrion’s brother Jaime and his wife the Lady Arya. Ever since the accident with the dagger (Tyrion didn’t believe a fucking word of it), the two had behaved like a pair of newlyweds in a love-match: spending every waking moment alone, and every instant that they could not be alone deep in conversation that would inevitably end in the pair of them either yelling at each other, laughing uproariously or kissing tenderly regardless of whether or not they were in company.

Aside from wanting to vomit, Tyrion found it unbelievable that now, the only time of day that he could be sure to see his brother was at mealtimes. How much fucking could two people possibly do? Even Tyrion himself could not keep at it for an entire day, careful as he was to spread rumours to the contrary; and according to the spies that he, fearful of another ‘accident’, had set to following his brother and his wife; the sounds perceived through the bedroom door were so soft as to be almost unnoticeable. So unless one of them had introduced some perverse game to see who could come the quietest (and he wouldn’t put it past either of them), Tyrion didn’t know what the fuck to think of any of it beyond the fact that Jaime was spending most of his time with a person who had tried to kill him and might very well try again. Tyrion could see nothing in the situation but a portentous, inevitable kind of darkness that would someday take his brother away from him for good.

_If Jaime dies…if…if…_

He couldn’t allow himself to think it. And yet in order to keep it from happening, he had to.

This morning, however, Jaime showed little sign of dying, the miserable weather making him seem altogether more alive than when he was dry. He and the Lady Arya had their heads together and were engaged in a whispered conversation of sufficient earnestness for Jaime to feel the need to comfortingly tuck strands of his wife’s wild black hair behind her ears while she gazed into his eyes with the same haunted look that she had cultivated since Lord Lucion had almost drowned on the beach, and that had intensified since the moment, two weeks previously, when the maester had pronounced her sufficiently ‘weaned’ to cease consumption of milk of the poppy. Being _weaned_ didn’t, however, seem to stop her being gaunt, bad-tempered and impossible to live with; her son’s continued absence, Aunt Genna’s continued sarcasm and Jaime’s continued readiness to shout right back at her aggravating her already-volatile personality to the point of refusing to pay attention even to the appearance of respectability. A case in point was her refusal to wear any of the gorgeous gowns that Aunt Genna had procured for her; confining herself instead to a series of worn-out and tacky riding outfits that would not have looked out of place on a sellsword or highwayman. This morning she wore a sleeveless doublet of black leather, the very sight of which made Tyrion feel even colder; her bare arms and neck so white as to be almost translucent.

‘Pidgeon!’ Tyrion called out.

A red-liveried servant appeared before him; looking wet, miserable and displeased.

‘I’ll thank my lord to remember that my family name is Crayne,’ the servant droned.

‘But Pidgeon suits you so much better!’ Tyrion declared.

‘Yes, my lord,’ the servant grumbled, and waited patiently to be told what to do.

‘Is everything ready in the Queen Dowager’s apartments for her arrival?’ Tyrion asked.

‘Yes, my lord,’ Crayne replied.

‘Including the three casks of wine?’ Tyrion enquired.

‘Yes, my lord,’ Crayne responded.

‘And they’ll be replenished every day?’ Tyrion questioned.

‘ _Tyrion_ ,’ Aunt Genna severely interrupted; her coiffure in ruins, ‘sweetling. Please don’t insult your royal sister when she is not here to defend herself.’

Lady Arya’s head jerked round at that.

‘Can we insult her when she _is_ here to defend herself?’ she asked, and the groan from the assembled Lannisters was almost audible.

Aunt Genna sniffed and drew herself up to her full height.

‘In the North,’ Aunt Genna said, ‘they clearly have different ideas about what constitutes unnatural behaviour.’

‘Aunt,’ Jaime said; his voice calm, but cautionary.

‘How true,’ Lady Arya was countering, ‘in moving to the South I improved the behaviour of both sides.’

‘Arya,’ Jaime sharply interjected.

Tyrion watched with no small satisfaction as the lady’s gaze fell suddenly and amazedly on Jaime; as though she had not expected him to reprimand her. Her eyes glowed for a few moments, before resuming their habitual deadness.

‘Are you sure that Lucion only arrives this afternoon?’ she asked of Jaime.

‘Yes,’ Jaime replied, with the exquisite patience of a person who had been asked the same question a thousand times, ‘Casterly Rock to Ashemark is two days, unless you gallop all the way.’

‘I wish they _would_ gallop all the way,’ Lady Arya mumbled; pouting and looking at her feet, embarrassed, in a way that Tyrion might have found charming in a five-year-old girl.

Jaime clearly found it exceptionally charming in a grown woman, for he cupped her chin and softly kissed her forehead; smiling as her hand caught his wrist and grasped it, as though she were holding onto something.

‘Why does she have to come?’ Lady Arya asked sadly.

‘She wishes to celebrate her name day at the place of her birth,’ Jaime replied.

Lady Arya scoffed, but said nothing. Jaime smiled.

‘Her bark is worse than her bite,’ he told her.

 _That’s one way of looking at it_ , Tyrion thought; doing his best to appear normal as the lady turned in his direction and spoke.

‘Have you got any wine?’ she asked.

‘Anything for you, sister dear,’ Tyrion replied; producing a wineskin from beneath his cloak and handing it to her.

The wineskin was immediately confiscated by Jaime and immediately snatched back from him, and Tyrion watched the pair of them fight over it for a few seconds until the sight ceased to be amusing.

‘Oh let her have it, Jaime,’ Tyrion snapped, ‘she’s probably so resilient by now that it’ll be like drinking water.’

‘Thank you, my lord,’ Lady Arya testily declared; uncorking the wine skin and drinking deeply while Jaime glared first at Tyrion as though he had committed some sort of treason, and then at Lady Arya as though she were some kind of tragic figure indulging a fatal flaw.

It was only when she had finished drinking, handed the skin back to Tyrion and thanked him formally that Lady Arya seemed to feel the pull of Jaime’s eyes on her. She turned, and looked at him looking at her expectantly; as though he were expecting a confession of fragility, or fear. That seemed to annoy her.

‘I’m not scared of _her_ ,’ she snapped.

‘I know you’re not scared of her,’ Jaime snapped in reply, ‘I didn’t say anything!’

‘You were _thinking_ it.’

‘You’re delusional as ever, my lady.’

‘She killed my Father.’

‘Did she?’ Aunt Genna interrupted.

‘She let it happen,’ Lady Arya declared.

‘Are the two mutually exclusive, in your experience?’ Aunt Genna pleasantly asked.

‘ _Aunt!_ ’ Jaime exclaimed.

Lady Arya was pouting again; staring dead ahead into the rain, as though she were alone in the world. Jaime touched her shoulder, and spoke to her softly.

‘Is it terrible for you?’ he asked, ‘her coming here?’

‘No,’ Lady Arya unconvincingly snapped; not looking at him; ‘is it terrible for you?’

Tyrion watched confusion flit across Jaime’s face, then hurt, then amazement. By the time the little bitch had bothered to look at him again; his gaze had turned to fury, and Tyrion watched, silently, for once, as Jaime abruptly seized Lady Arya’s elbow and pulled her out of line into a corner of the yard.

* * *

 

‘What the fuck was that supposed to mean?’ Jaime demanded.

‘You know what it means,’ Arya snapped; folding her arms and refusing to look at him.

Jaime stared at her in astonishment.

‘You _are_ joking!’ he exclaimed.

‘No, I’m not,’ Arya testily remarked.

‘She’s my sister!’

‘That never stopped you before.’

‘I wasn’t married before.’

‘And if we weren’t married?’

Discomfort surged in Jaime’s blood; his mind jerking out of the habitual pleasure it took from any form of jealousy as he watched Arya furiously interpret his silence.

‘Oh, seven gods –’ she groaned.

‘Arya –’ he interrupted.

‘You were still fucking her when I was with Ramsay!’ she accused.

‘Me?’ Jaime responded, ‘I most certainly was not.’

‘Liar,’ Arya spat.

Jaime stared at her, and found himself colouring.

‘Alright,’ he confessed, ‘maybe I did once –’

‘You’re lying again.’

‘Twice. A few times; what does it matter?’

‘So you didn’t actually mean all that shit about loving me since I was girl?’

‘You know I did –’

‘So why were you still fucking Cersei!’

Jaime groaned out loud.

‘Out of lust; out of habit; what the fuck do you want me to say?’ he demanded, ‘Men have needs!’

‘Women also have needs,’ Arya declared, ‘I managed to do without them; what makes _you_ so fucking special?’

‘I had no real _desire_ to, but –’

‘Did she take you? Against your will? Can you not defend yourself?’

‘I was a self-centred son-of-a-bitch who felt no obligation to you.’

‘I’ve understood that much.’

Jaime ran his fingers rapidly through his hair; at pains to keep himself from reaching out and strangling her; trying hard to repress the iron resentment burning within him, and the anger, the instinct for cruelty that he could never rid himself of; not even for her; _doesn’t she understand, hasn’t she been fucking LISTENING, hasn’t she been –_

‘You’re jealous,’ he angrily growled, ‘and – ’

‘JEALOUS?’ Arya exclaimed; turning red.

‘– and you seem to be suffering from some sort of memory problem. You have all of me, and you fucking know that.’

‘Is that supposed to make me weak at the knees?’

‘Is this about what happened in the cave?’

‘This has nothing to do with what happened in the bloody cave.’

‘I don’t have time for this.’

‘Why don’t you have time for this? Your sweet sister is fucking late!’

A blast of trumpets tore the conversation in two; their song punctuated by the sound of hooves clattering up the causeway. Arya was glaring at him with an expression of profound disgust that pierced him and carved him up _doesn’t she understand hasn’t she been listening_ and even though he knew that she wasn’t herself; that something else within her was speaking with her lips; that he needed to be kind, that he needed to understand, he leaned forward slightly; determined to hurt her as she had just hurt him.

‘Now that you’ve suggested it,’ Jaime purred, ‘perhaps I _should_ fuck my sister while she’s here. For old time’s sake. That way you’d at least be right about something. Would you like to watch us? Maybe Cersei can lick your cunt while I fuck you from behind.’

Arya slapped him, open-palmed; the sound ringing across the courtyard. A brief flame of triumph blazed through him at the red wrath that flared up in her cheeks; at her fist that she clenched and unclenched; as though hitting him had hurt her. Then her grey eyes fixed on a point behind him and grew black with something that he could not name, and when he turned, he saw his sister; descending from her wheelhouse and pulling up her hood.


	31. Chapter 31

Arya paced alone in the forecourt of Casterly Rock; the setting sun turning the cobblestones red. Lucion was meant to have arrived two hours ago, and as yet, there had been no sign of him or of the party escorting him from Ashemark. The lion bitch (Arya had taken to calling Cersei that in her head) had long since retired to prepare herself for her nameday feast, and Arya didn’t much care where Jaime was. Probably sulking in their chambers and waiting for her to apologise first.

Her heart raced, first with the thought of him, then with the anger that accompanied the thought of him. Why was everything so fucking confusing?

She hadn’t forgiven him, and she probably never would. Too much had been taken from her: her son had grown up in too much horror and too much darkness for her to forgive him, or even to contemplate it. And yet when he had plunged that dagger into his fucking shoulder, she had felt like she was dying; like she _would_ die if he was taken from her. _Taken from her._ What did that even mean? Was he hers? Was she his? What were they?

The cynical part of her told her that she felt this way out of gratitude for his help during her illness; but she knew that wasn’t it. What she felt was too deep-seated, too fierce, too feverish to be the result of gratitude alone. She knew that anyone she asked would tell her that she was in love, but she knew that wasn’t it either. She’d been in love once before – with him – and this wasn’t at all the same thing. It was something that went beyond the bond and the desire that she had felt as an adolescent. It was like wearing a second skin that covered up the wounded, scarred, bleeding parts of her and hid them from the world while it healed them; looked at them without revulsion; cleaned them without judgement; walked headlong into her darknesses with her. It was knowing that someday, she would also be a second skin for him, when she was well and he was sick. It was knowing that she would protect him too.

The intensity of that knowledge was so euphoric it frightened her. She _felt_ so much it frightened her. She wanted to tell him – in the cave, she had wanted to tell him; his mouth had burned so beautifully, all over her body; her heart had beaten so beautifully, in perfect time with his – but then Ramsay’s face had been there, his voice, his hands, and she had screamed and screamed and screamed as her mind had searched for white, milk of the poppy numbness, and found none of it; because it was no longer with her; because she no longer had a shield that she could control.

Jaime had held her while she had cried her heart out; while the storm raged outside. He had whispered that he was with her, and that he would never let anyone hurt her again. And when she had calmed herself, they had moved on…moved on to what, exactly?

She woke up every day, promising herself that today would be better. That she wouldn’t lash out at everything; whip everyone to death with her temper because everything that milk of the poppy had dulled was now rushing into her mind unbridled and un-numbed. She told herself that she would be calm and patient; that she wouldn’t let one minor incident early in the day distress her so badly that the rest of it would be ruined. But something would always happen, and she would always end up being the same: the barbarian bitch from the North who couldn’t be trusted to look after her own child.

At night, she still saw him dead on the beach; Jaime slamming his hands down onto Lucion’s chest like a wild animal while she shouted at him to stop. At night, she still saw the expanse of empty sand and endless waves before her, and not another soul in sight; no one – except her son drowning beneath the waves; wondering why she wasn’t coming to save him.

She shivered despite the heat of the sunset; her blood turning so cold at the memory that it made her nauseous. Lucion was being allowed back to Casterly Rock, but she doubted that she would be trusted with his care. Oh, they’d make a show of letting things go on as before – Jaime would make them – but he’d also make informants follow her, just to make sure she didn’t smother the boy with his own pillow while tucking him in.

What she had done was a guilt that she could never expunge. Never. It was worse than not being able to protect him from Ramsay as much as she should have; worse than not being as strong as she should have been. He was her son, her life, he was everything that was good and right, like hope…

She groaned aloud and covered her eyes with her hands as the pain surged inside her.

_I was strong before. Before I married Ramsay. I was brave. I could endure anything. And now…_

A cry shattered her thoughts; a call from the watchman at the top of the wall.  Arya looked up.

‘Is it them?’ she shouted upwards.

‘It is, my lady,’ the watchman replied; the sun drenching his face in a painful, brilliant light.

* * *

 

Jaime’s heart lurched in astonishment as Cersei wrapped her hands around his head and kissed him like a starving lover, and for a moment, he felt himself responding; his instincts and his habits overtaking will and thought; but when he placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her firmly away from him, her eyes were stunned, then suspicious, then wrathful.

‘You can’t be serious,’ Cersei hissed.

‘I am perfectly serious,’ Jaime gently replied, ‘I can no longer –’

‘You can _no longer?_ ’ Cersei interrupted, straightening her back in queenly fashion, ‘when I was a queen wed, you would come to my bed at every opportunity.’

‘I was a child, then,’ Jaime murmured.

‘Is that a euphemism for ‘I’ve discovered young cunt’?’ Cersei spat.

Her words were thorns that dug into his skin and drew blood; and flung his mind away from her, and back; back to the cave, to the smell of cold stone and rain, to Arya’s skin on cold stone and rain, to her sighs of contentment as they turned to screams of terror; to himself as he turned red from fear and shame.

He pulled away from the memory as he felt his mind darken, and when he looked once again at Cersei, her face was rapidly metamorphosing from spitting venom to scornful delight.

His discomfort had shown in his face.

‘Oh, you haven’t,’ Cersei remarked; smiling as his refusal to meet her eyes confirmed the fact, ‘don’t tell me you _haven’t_?’

‘Cersei –’ he interrupted.

‘You haven’t fucked her, have you?’ Cersei sneered; ignoring him; ‘you haven’t been able to bring yourself to seduce that _little_ _animal_?’

‘For fuck’s sake, Cersei –’

His sister threw back her golden head and laughed; baring the white skin of her throat.

‘What is the exact nature of the problem, brother?’ she sniggered, ‘are you afraid of befouling her? Does she struggle too much when you try to hold her down? Or do Northern women only give their husbands heirs through immaculate conceptions?’

Jaime stared at her; astonished.

‘You were never cruel before,’ he said.

‘And _you_ were never so guarded before,’ Cersei retaliated, ‘not with me.’

Shame plunged through him again; a culmination of his own desperation and helplessness.

‘It’s…’ Jaime stammered; ‘it’s nightmares, she has nightmares.’

Cersei laughed once again.

‘Poor child,’ she said, ‘if only every husband in Westeros accepted ‘nightmares’ as an excuse.’

Jaime tried to respond, but her pitilessness struck him dumb.

‘Father would be furious,’ his sister flamboyantly continued; the newfound spite not leaving her voice for an instant; ‘how will you continue the family name if you can’t even bring yourself to fuck your wife?’

‘Fucking her will _not_ help to continue the family name!’ Jaime snapped.

‘How so?’ Cersei sang, ‘is the little animal barren?’

‘ _No_ ,’ Jaime retorted through gritted teeth, ‘she was fertile enough to have a son by her previous husband. Until one evening when the bastard got so drunk he tied her down and took a knife to her cunt. The maester pronounced her incapable of having more children once he’d stopped her bleeding to death.’

Cersei did not seem to find the story upsetting in the least.

‘Has she offered any other excuses to explain herself?’ she asked.

‘ _She doesn’t need to_ ,’ Jaime growled, ‘I have done her wrong.’

‘Done her wrong?’ Cersei pleasantly repeated, ‘ _how_ have you done her wrong?’

Jaime shut his mouth and refused to reply. Under the circumstances, her response would only serve to make him angrier.

Cersei’s lip curled, and her eyes brightened; understanding him.

‘All the same,’ she remarked, ‘if you won’t fuck _her_ , then she has certainly been remiss in not fucking _you_ out of gratitude for the _safety_ that you have given her.’

‘Do you expect me to believe that her abstinence offends you?’

‘Not in the least.’

And she kissed him again, forcefully, her lips gnashing urgently at his as he took hold of her shoulders and pushed her away with equal urgency; anger flaring within him at her gall.

‘For fuck’s sake, will you stop?’ Jaime exclaimed.

Cersei seized hold of the front of his doublet and didn’t stop; her eyes burning with want.

‘You swore that you would always be mine,’ she hissed; half-desperation; half-anger; ‘you swore that we would always belong to each other; that nothing would change that: not the world; not marriage; not _anything_.’

‘I will not break the vow that I have sworn to her,’ Jaime said; covering Cersei’s hands with his as her eyes filled with tears and tears began to choke out of her throat.

‘But you will happily break the vow you swore to _me_?’ she sobbed.

‘Cersei –’ he interrupted.

But her tears were already flowing; turning her golden skin the colour of sunset; and as she began to weep in earnest; he felt himself soften, and hurt as she did; the same flesh; the same blood; that he knew as well as his own.

As she wept, he embraced her. It was like holding iron.

And yet she must have known…from the first moment that he had stopped loving her, she must have known…

 ‘How long?’ Cersei wept, ‘how long have you been lost to me?’

‘Cersei, I –’

‘ _How long?_ Since the riots? Since Father? Did it start then?’

‘Before then.’

She screamed into his chest. Her fingers tore into his shoulders like claws, and her chest heaved in pain; as though the very act of breathing caused her nothing but grief.

Jaime held her tightly and tried to speak words of comfort to her. But when he began to speak, she cut him off, and continued.

‘Shall I tell you why I came here?’ she sobbed, ‘why I left our son in the hands of the Tyrells to come to Casterly Rock? I came here to be together with you – on _our_ nameday; because we will always be together, you and I, no matter what happens; that’s what we always said; what we always swore…and now, I find you… _weak_ …and _ashamed_ of me…’

Jaime seized her chin and forced her to look at him.

‘I was never… _ashamed_ of loving you,’ he said.

Cersei stared back at him.

‘So why did you stop?’

When he didn’t reply, she smirked through her tears; as though they had never happened.

‘Enjoy your ugly little virgin bride,’ she spat, ‘I hope she makes you happy.’


	32. Chapter 32

Lucion wandered the corridors of Casterly Rock in search of mischief; his lower lip thrust sullenly outwards and his entire demeanour indicative of extreme displeasure. When he had seen his mother again from atop his horse, excitement and happiness had seemed to burst through him like the sun; making him want to jump up and down forever, and he had run to her arms and had the breath squeezed out of him, and been fussed over, and hugged, and hugged again, and asked thousands of questions.

‘You’re very thin. Did they feed you enough?’

‘Why are so pale? Are you sleeping properly?’

‘How is Ashemark? Did you burn any trees down?’

‘Did they hurt you? Tell me if they hurt you. I’ll go and kill them for you.’

Lucion had fiercely remarked that he was more than capable of killing them himself, and as he was swung up into yet another embrace, he silently cursed that his constant lack of sleep should be so visible.

The nightmares that had begun after the accident had not ceased. They woke him up twenty times a night, the visions: the lioness, the cellars, the room of broken furniture, but he had thought that he was doing a good job of covering it up – he was very good at covering things up. And then Mother had seen him and started fussing – ‘there are rings under your eyes, you’re so pale, I can feel your ribs through your clothes.’…

He didn’t like her to worry about him. She had so many other things to worry about. When he had ridden into the forecourt of Casterly Rock and caught sight of her again, he had been shocked by her appearance – so pale, so fragile-looking; as though she had aged ten years, and her eyes were so clear that they frightened him –she looked like she was sick, or had a fever; just without any of the sweat or the sneezing or the other stupid things that usually happened to people when they got sick. It was just her eyes – bright, bright. Shining. He had never seen her eyes like that before. He was used to her eyes being clouded, cloudy, like a winter sky. Not bright, bright. Shining.

Mother had whisked him off to her chambers, and had charged a passing servant with bringing up the biggest meal that he could find ‘before my son starves to death as opposed to just looking it.’

‘Most of the food in the castle has gone to the nameday feast, my lady,’ the servant had politely replied; looking troubled, ‘some of the guests may have to go without –’

‘Bring us Queen Cersei’s!’ Mother had laughed, and had chased Lucion all the way to her chambers.

No sooner had they sat down and begun to talk, however, that a commanding rap on the door had shattered their conversation, and a fat lady in red came in with a velvet sack slung carefully over her arm.

‘There you are!’ the fat lady said to Mother, sounding angry; ‘why are you not in your chambers?’

‘These _are_ her chambers!’ Lucion snapped.

The fat lady glared at him with an expression of such imperiousness that Lucion was instantly terrified of her.

‘Don’t you talk to me like that, young man!’ she said; in a tone that demanded the utmost respect, ‘I will not stand for it!’

‘Apologies, my lady,’ Lucion mumbled; staring at his boots and expecting Mother to spring to his defence.

Mother, however, did nothing of the kind, and seemed just as disinclined to irritate the fat lady; though she didn’t seem scared of her.

‘Lucion,’ Mother testily said, ‘this is Ser Jaime’s aunt, the Lady Genna. Aunt Genna, this is my son, the Lord Lucion of Winterfell.’

Lucion stared at Mother as the fat lady curtseyed.

 _Aunt_ Genna?

‘My lord,’ the fat lady called Aunt Genna greeted; before turning once again to Mother; ‘the feast begins in an hour, young lady. Why are you still in your riding clothes?’

‘Because I’m going riding,’ Mother declared.

‘No, you’re not,’ the fat lady said.

‘Yes, I am,’ Mother replied.

‘No, you’re not,’ the fat lady repeated.

‘Yes, I _AM_!’ Mother shouted.

The fat lady looked offended rather than angry.

‘Do not raise your voice to me, little lady,’ she said, ‘I am not a whore or a tavern wench.’

Mother looked her up and down as though appraising her for just such purposes.

‘No,’ Mother said, ‘you’re not.’

The fat lady did not seem to hear her, and kept talking.

‘My nephew,’ she said, ‘out of what he calls respect for your ‘privacy’, has asked me to –’

‘I knew he’d have a part in it,’ Mother interrupted.

‘Has asked me to tell you that he would very much appreciate it if you attended his nameday feast –’

‘Well you can tell your nephew to go fuck himself.’

‘– and that he would be equally appreciative if you wore this.’

‘Jaime said that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you going to dress me in a velvet sack?’

‘Only in the contents of the velvet sack.’

Mother’s face turned red with rage.

‘If you or your stupid nephew think that you can force me into some stupid dress just because his bitch of a sister has come to visit, then you are fucking DELUSIONAL –’

Lucion settled back in his chair; looking forward to a nice long fight, before the fat lady spoilt his fun by crossing the room, taking him firmly by the hand, and depositing him outside the chamber door with the instruction: ‘go and play.’

That had been ages ago, and Lucion was getting bored of walking, so he decided to go and see if Ser Rickard was in his solar. Perhaps he could tell him what the matter was with Mother’s eyes.

No sooner had the thought occurred to him that a door to his left banged open, and a woman stormed out of it in a blur of crimson silk and golden hair; almost colliding with Lucion in her haste to be gone.

‘Get out of my way,’ the Queen Dowager spat; her eyes briefly meeting Lucion’s before shoving him away from her and storming away.

The blow was not hard, or even particularly painful, but it seemed to Lucion as though he had been punched in the stomach. For at precisely the same moment that her eyes had met his, he had recognised them: large, green, glowing; the eyes of the starving lioness who had haunted his dreams for weeks; circling Ser Rickard; circling his mother; and neither of them able to see her.

* * *

 

Arya snatched the velvet sack from Aunt Genna and opened it in as unceremonious a manner as she could muster; readying herself to make her usual speech about not wanting to be a lady, and failing that, to unleash a torrent of abuse about what her stupid husband had said to her in the stupid forecourt; all the while ignoring the voice in her head that whispered to her that the entire argument had really been her fault.

But any words she might have spoken died on her tongue as she upended the sack, and the most glorious riding attire she had ever seen tumbled onto the mattress.

She could instantly tell that it had been made for her, or at least that it was too small to fit any other person she knew. It was made of leather; a magnificent, gorgeously-tailored leather of a brown so deep it was almost black, but with a kind of redness to it; a glow bright enough to lend warmth to shade, but leaden enough to avoid being Lannister crimson.

It was beautiful.

Tentatively, she picked up the coat and touched the sleeve. Its length was perfect. It wouldn’t have to be rolled up or cut off, as she usually had to do with the male clothes she wore, and there was a sprawling and intricate border woven into the hem that showed a direwolf raging through a forest with its teeth bared; the trees in the forest heart trees; their faces wide and watchful.

‘It’s your hair,’ Arya heard Aunt Genna say.

She turned.

‘What?’

‘He says it’s the same colour as your hair. That is why he chose it.’

‘Now you’re making this up.’

‘I am not.’

Arya felt her lip trembling as she carefully laid down the coat, and ran her fingers over the trousers, boots and doublet, and anger rose briefly in her chest as she realised that she was blinking tears out of her eyes ( _weak weak stupid_ ). She didn’t turn around. She didn’t dare look at Aunt Genna. All she could think about was Jaime, and how she was meant to be angry with him.

_But this…this…he must…he must really…_

‘Do you feel quite well, Lady Arya?’ Aunt Genna asked, ‘shall I summon a maester?’

‘He wants me as I am,’ Arya mumbled; still not turning around.

‘Gods help us all,’ Aunt Genna declared, and before Arya could decide whether or not the insult deserved a rebuttal, Aunt Genna had seized her arm, whirled her across the room and plonked her down in front of the mirror. Hairbrush in hand, she attempted to catch a strand of Arya’s hair, and ended up yanking a clump of it out by the roots instead; making Arya yell in pain.

‘What are you _doing_?’

‘You can’t wear an outfit inspired by your hair if your hair looks like a crow’s nest.’

‘Oh yes I can.’

‘Seven gods, your hair is dreadful. When was the last time you washed it?’

‘It rained on me last week.’

Aunt Genna tut-tutted disapprovingly, gave her a withered look and promptly swopped the hairbrush out for a comb.

‘I would have it washed, but there isn’t time,’ she fussed, ‘I shall do what I can and hope you do not disgrace those beautiful riding clothes.’

‘Don’t pretend you’re thrilled by the idea of my wearing riding clothes to a feast,’ Arya snorted.

‘I’m not,’ Aunt Genna said severely; as though she found the very idea of pretence insulting.

Arya slumped back in her chair; exasperated by this woman’s refusal to rise to the bait; and tried again.

‘So why are you doing this, if you’re so insulted?’ Arya pressed.

‘What do you mean?’ Aunt Genna asked.

‘ _Why are you messing around with my hair_?’ Arya enunciated; as though conversing with a five year old, ‘can’t you go and play with Cersei’s hair? You hate me.’

Aunt Genna, who seemed quietly amused by Arya’s words, yanked out another bushel of hair before replying.

‘I do not hate you, dear,’ she said; in a tone that reminded Arya of Tywin; ‘I strongly _dislike_ you, but that’s not altogether the same thing.’

Arya did not see how such a difference was possible.

The two woman’s eyes met in the mirror, and both of them fell silent. Arya remembered the night that Jaime had stabbed himself: the utter fear, anger and horror on Aunt Genna’s face as she argued first with Arya, then with the maester, then with Tyrion, and then with Jaime himself.

 _That boy is like a son to me_ , she had said, _and if anything, ANYTHING happens to him –_

 _What would I have done?_ Arya thought, _if Lucion were in Jaime’s position? If I had entered; knowing nothing?_

Arya did not lower her eyes.

‘Aunt Genna,’ she said, ‘he really did do it himself.’

The large Lannister matriarch stared silently at Arya for some moments; her face hard, but illegible.

‘Do you have any ribbons?’ Aunt Genna said, and Arya knew that that was the best reply she could expect.


	33. Chapter 33

Arya was passing through the gardens on her way to one of the great hall’s infinite balconies (a way that would allow her to enter, and have the choice of leaving again) when Cersei emerged from the darkness before her; clad in gold like some cruel, bejewelled wraith. She glided towards the younger woman with a courteous smile on her face; a river of gold joining a lake of bloodied darkness, and Arya felt anger welling up within her; anger and a little girl’s helplessness, nine years ago before the sept of Baelor;

Cersei paused regally before her, and genteelly bent her head, so that her lips brushed briefly against Arya’s cheekbone.

Arya reached for her bottle of milk of the poppy. It wasn’t there.

‘My brother has spent most of the afternoon telling me of your late husband’s fondness for slicing up your nether regions, my lady,’ Cersei said, ‘horrible. _Horrible_.’

Arya found herself wanting to move, or say something; raise a hand; draw a dagger; dig her claws into Cersei’s skin; anything to show this lion bitch her place.

All she could do was grasp at thin air for a bottle; a safety; a sleep that no longer existed.

_Mouse. Mouse. Mouse._

Cersei was smiling pleasantly at her.

‘You shouldn’t let it hold you back, my dear, you really shouldn’t,’ the Queen Dowager crooned; her voice showing no knowledge of Arya’s discomfort; her eyes declaring wisdom wisdom wisdom of cruelty; ‘your position will not be secure until you have given my brother a son.’

She wanted to vomit. She wanted to speak. Her teeth were pulsing in her mouth; aching with the desire to rip Cersei’s throat out.

She opened her mouth to speak – even the tiniest howl would have been better than nothing – but the lion bitch was already walking away from her, back towards the hall, glimmering like the yellow moon.

_Mouse. Mouse. Mouse._

Her vision was pulling itself to pieces. The past rose up in her mind – the knife, the blood, the _twisting_ of it, and Ramsay laughing at her as her struggles grew weaker and weaker. And suddenly it seemed as though there were guests with them in the chamber: Cersei at the door, her eyes wide with fascination; her fingers twitching like a maester’s; Jaime at the window with his back to them; refusing to turn his head and look.

* * *

 

It occurred to Jaime, as he stood with Arya in one of the great hall’s countless curtained alcoves set aside for proposals and conspiring, that perhaps he had acted a little too much like a Lannister today.

True, the entire fucking argument on the subject of Cersei had been Arya’s fault, and true, Jaime was not entirely blameless in the fighting of it, but perhaps he could have thought of a better peace offering than sending his bloody _aunt_ with a message and a gift. Throwing gold at a problem made him feel like his father, though his father’s problems had always had the happy tendency to disappear once the last coin had fallen to the ground. Tonight, the only discernible effect Jaime’s own throwing of gold seemed to have had was Arya storming into the great hall like some terrifyingly beautiful firestorm; her coat, doublet and breeches moulding to her form as perfectly as Jaime’s own body did:

‘We need to talk _right now_!’ she had hissed; before taking hold of his injured shoulder, yanking him into one of these infernal alcoves, pulling the curtain shut and beginning to shout at him.

‘Your sister said something to me this evening, as I arrived;’ Arya spat; her eyes a horror; ‘she told me how _sorry_ she was that Ramsay’s predilection for slicing at my genitalia had made me barren. How could she know that?’

Jaime stared at her. For a moment, he didn’t even know what she was talking about.

Later, he would wonder if that made him innocent, or stupid.

 _Shit_.

‘ _How could you tell her something like that_?’ Arya demanded; her voice brimming with so much hurt, betrayal and stifled hysteria that if filled him up with disgrace; ‘ _why would you_? It must have been…what, _five minutes_ after she arrived? Why in seven hells would that be the first thing you told her?’

 _Oh seven gods, Cersei, you…why…Cersei, why the_ fuck?

‘ _Why_ , Jaime???” Arya snapped.

‘She’s my sister, isn’t she?’ Jaime snapped back; his mouth saying one thing while his mind said another; ‘don’t people usually discuss such things with their sisters?’

She gazed at him in horror.

‘Not when their sister is Cersei fucking Lannister!’ she declared.

‘Would you care as much if I’d told Aunt Genna?’ he asked; knowing what a stupid question it was.

‘Of…of _course_ I would care!’ Arya stuttered; the battle for control and the loss of it raging across her face; ‘It’s _private_! I told you in _confidence_ when I was lying on my chamber floor choking on my own _vomit_ ; didn’t it occur to you that I might not want the whole fucking world to know?’

Jaime’s rational mind told him that she was right, but something in him prevented him from acknowledging it.

He knew that she was right. But he could not feel it within himself.

He tried to build a bridge between the two.

‘There’s nothing shameful in –’ he started.

‘I know there’s nothing ‘shameful in’!’ Arya hissed; her face lined and terrible and accusing; ‘I just don’t want people to know, and I sure as hell don’t want HER to know –’

‘I had no choice but to tell her!’ Jaime insisted.

‘Bullshit!’ Arya stormed.

‘What else could I have said when she was pacing up and down like a fucking septa talking about wifely duties and babies and conjugal fucking felicity?’ he stormed; trying to appeal to her love of rebelliousness.

‘You could have told her to fuck off!’ Arya shouted.

‘If I had, she’d probably have mentioned it again!’

‘She HAS mentioned it again! To ME!!!’

He could see the anger in her eyes; the desperation; the realisation that he still didn’t understand; the silent pleading with him to do just that. But he still didn’t understand. He saw it clouding her eyes; making her seem so pale and small in her clothes of that beautiful colour; the colour of her hair.

He tried to explain.

‘Whatever you may think of Cersei,’ Jaime told her, ‘she is my twin; when we were children I told her everything –’

‘I don’t care,’ Arya quietly interrupted; looking miserable and overcome.

‘– and though there’s little I have to tell her now without her guessing already –’

‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’

‘– it sometimes happens that we slip back into the manner of childhood; to telling each other everything with words…that’s what must have happened today–’

‘ _Why_ , Jaime?’ Arya stormed, ‘why did it happen today? Why does it _sometimes_ happen?’

‘It happens when I need help!’ Jaime snapped.

He saw the words leave his mouth and strike her. Confusion flashed across her face; turning her anger the colour of snow, and in her look there was a sudden and intense openness of expression that told him that her wrath was gone; replaced by a kind of shocked curiosity.

He stared at her, cautious, and waited for her to speak.

‘Her… _help_?’ Arya softly repeated; with the guileless confusion of a total innocent; ‘what…what do you need her help with?’

Jaime wondered for a moment if she was being artfully sarcastic, but the look on her face made that impossible. Her eyes were flickering up and down his body, as though searching for a wound of some sort, and when they returned to his face, wide and grey and anxious, he realised, with a similar mortification to what he had felt six years previously during his vigil over Father’s body, that the only thing she felt at this moment was worry…worry for him.

The effect of that apprehension was so different now; after so many weeks of seeing her struggle; of seeing her mad; of not knowing how to help her; sitting with her, watching her, helpless, thinking she would die, not knowing what to do if she did.

‘Look at me,’ Jaime softly told her; indicating himself with a gentle sweep of his arm; ‘do you see a reader of souls? A mind-reader? Somebody who knows the slightest thing about anything except using a sword? How you have lived…what I have done…what I have tried to do to help you, or at least to make things a little better…most of the time I don’t know how to _act_ with you, or what to say, or fucking do…what do I say to you; when you suffer? When the nightmares come?’

‘You never say anything,’ Arya interrupted.

‘Exactly,’ Jaime affirmed.

‘I LIKE you not to say anything!’ she insisted.

Jaime sighed.

‘I look at you, and see you; see you struggle, see you fight yourself and everything else, and sometimes…sometimes I can’t _reach_ you; I’m…I’m _empty_ …can’t you see why I’d need a bit of fucking _help_ from time to time?’

Arya stared at him wordlessly; her expression lost; her eyes flickering from his face to a place that only she could see; seeking an answer, not finding it.

‘But…but why from her?’ she asked.

A pinprick of anger pierced his heart and bled all patience and all understanding from him. Why the fuck wasn’t she _listening_?

He snorted, turned his back and stormed towards the curtain that separated them from the hall. He was about to draw it aside when Arya’s voice spoke softly behind him.

‘You _have_ reached me.’

Slowly, Jaime turned.

He was struck, as he did so, by how much the colour of her clothing became her; how it melded to the dull, pulsing fire of her hair and the sharp lines of her pale, prematurely-lined face; to her eyes which were clear now; which were lucid, alert and alive from life beyond the white veil of milk of poppy.

‘You _have_ reached me,’ Arya mumbled; so softly that she was almost incomprehensible (though he supposed he should be grateful that she was looking at his eyes and not at his feet); ‘nobody else would have…I mean no one could have helped me like you did… it’s like you’re inside me…holding me up from the inside…as though you were my bones…’

‘Arya…’ Jaime breathed; his heart beating a rush of blood so powerful it almost choked him.

‘And your telling Cersei such a…such a _thing_ as if though were discussing a joust or a masquerade…you can’t be that person, and…my person…at the same time.’

Her eyes were still pleading with him; pleading with him to understand, or at least to acknowledge what she had said; but his tongue betrayed him; held him back; made him voiceless as he watched her fall silent; watched her eyes darken with tears and her hands shove him aside as she bolted, so that he wouldn’t see them.

It took a moment of staring at the crowd beyond the curtain to realise what he had done.

_Oh, you idiot._

His eyes searched for her, but she was already out of sight; disappearing into the crowd like a ghost. Swearing, he pulled the latch for the secret passageway and stepped into the wall as it opened; hurrying up the dark steps and counting them, as he had done as a child. If he exited at the right place, he would reach her chambers before she had the chance to lock the door.

 _You can’t be that person, and…my person…at the same time,_ she had said.

 _She was asking me to choose_ , he thought.

_And I hesitated._

* * *

 

He pushed open the hidden door that lead to her chambers.

‘Arya?’ he called.

No answer.

He strode into the room and began to check potential hiding places (she was childish, in that way), and his mind was awash with her face and her words; and what they meant.

 _My person_ , she had called him, and this from a woman who could hardly ever be called upon to say so much as ‘thank you’, for fear that it would make her look weak.

It must have taken immense courage to say what she had said. And he had –

He pulled back a set of curtains rather more violently than was necessary; sending clouds of dust motes swirling upwards into the darkness.

_You can’t be that person, and…my person…at the same time._

He gave the foot of the window seat a good kick with the toe of his boot, and jumped as a resounding _clack_ rang out through the chamber; like two pieces of wood being smacked together.

Jaime looked down.

A panel had fallen from the base of the window seat onto the floor. He crouched and picked it up; making to shove it back into place.

Then he saw that the space it concealed was hollow.

His heart began to beat very quickly; so quickly and so hard it hurt, and a strange kind of fear swept over him, so powerful that he would have called it a premonition had he believed in such things.

He reached into the hollow with one hand, and drew out its contents.

It was a small box, made from the most unremarkable material imaginable; so ordinary-looking that he wouldn’t have looked twice at it had he found it on the table instead. He lifted the lid.

Inside were thousands of fragile sheets of paper; folded neatly, stacked into piles and bound carefully together with string.

He selected one at random, unfolded it and felt his heart tear in his chest as he recognised his own hand.

_Please don’t tear this up without reading it._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Awesome Readers
> 
> Sorry for the long wait between the previous update and this one, but this chapter has been hell, and by that I mean searing, blood-red, deepest of the seven hells HELL! This may not be immediately apparent in reading it, as there’s nothing in it that’s particularly different from the rest of my stuff, except that I must have written and scrapped about ten completely different versions of what actually happens in this bloody chapter; going from Arya and Jaime dancing really badly and being cute (far too fluffy), to an unfortunately-timed rendition of The Rains of Castamere leading to more hurt/comfort (didn’t work), to Arya’s whole ‘my person’ thing leading to a hot make out session behind that bloody curtain (out of character) to the final version, which I hope is more in-tune to what Arya’s reaction (or any woman’s reaction) would be to her husband’s just spilling details about something as personal as infertility to his twin sister. I think the problem lay in the fact that I would really like Arya and Jaime to just be happy and harmonious now (as happy and harmonious as it can get for those two), but in a story like this where there’s a combination of hurt/comfort, a history of emotional baggage and abuse in Arya and a healing process that takes place for her (a large part of that thanks to Jaime), there is a tremendous risk of her turning out to be a sugary sweet damsel in distress who is utterly dependent on and subservient to the guy who has helped her out, and completely forgiving of any shit that he does, no matter how stupid it is. I really want to avoid this, because while Jaime has played an integral role in Arya’s healing process, she also needs to heal herself and save herself; and regrettably, that is not going to be achieved by chucking her into marital bliss just yet.
> 
> You will remember that this story started out as a one shot, and that I’ve pretty much been making things up as I go along. If I’ve gotten as far as introducing the main antagonist to Casterly Rock merely out of a hope that she’ll stir up some kind of shit that will separate but ultimately unite the protagonists, we may reasonably conclude that I’m getting quite desperate for interesting plot points. So, if anyone has any ideas, or requests, even, about things they’d like to happen, please let me know so that I can revive my floundering creativity! I would really appreciate it!
> 
> Thank you once again!

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews are inspirational! :-D


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